


Risk Management

by Plinkoid_Fics (daveaj)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daveaj/pseuds/Plinkoid_Fics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing ventured, nothing gained.<br/>It's not really as if we need that gain though, is it? You're happy. I'm happy. Things are comfortable. And if I want to hold your hand and you might not be considerably against that idea; that's not really the sort of prize you put everything on the line for. I'm right, aren't I? It's called Risk Management.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Apple-Pie Order

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a repost with permission. It was originally by former Tumblr/AO3 user Plinkoid. For more information on the author, go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Daveaj/profile). The rating and tags may not be entirely accurate to what they were before, but I tried to account for any triggers I could find. If anyone leaves comments I will make sure the author sees them.  
> This is the only unfinished work the author took down. They may or may not want to finish it in the future, but if they do it probably won't be for a while. If you want to ask the author, you can do so [here](http://plinkoid.tumblr.com/ask).  
> Any notes after this point are the author's original notes.

You had said that I had to stay for dessert tonight. You had set it into the oven whilst we were having diner together, so that it would have cooled down to perfection by the time we’d cleared our plates. The aroma that had wafted from the baking had immediately alerted me of the way in which you wanted the night’s events to unfold.

All things considered, I wouldn’t refer to apples as my kryptonite. I’d feel more than flimsy were my weakness to be something sweet and fruity. But somewhere down the line, you’d made sure that I would one day come to love the taste. That day had already come, years ago, and the growth of that sentiment had been quite significant since then as well.  
  
The moment that that seed had been planted though had to be the evening of the day we’d finally met. Three years of friendship held their own weight, but meeting face to face definitely had had a different quality to it. Your father had baked an Alsatian styled apple pie. He’d said, and I remember those exact words:  
  
“John has told me how much of an apple fan you are.”  
  
I wasn’t really. And I hadn’t even known that Alsace was a region of France back then. And yet, it had tasted so heavenly I’d almost wept at your kitchen table; the one you guys had specifically set out for my visit. But I’d voiced my ecstasy so thoroughly that I am absolutely sure that that had been the moment your belief that it indeed was my kryptonite had solidified.  
  
I don’t know, maybe I should have been offended that a few comments on my side about apple juice had pushed you to such an extreme conclusion. I guess that before all of that, it had never been the actual taste of apple juice that affected me so positively. It was that knowledge that my brother would purchase it for me with the idea that as a much younger child, I’d get giddy at the sight of juice boxes. They just so happened to be apple back then, and from that point forward. I guess that both him and you had overestimated my actual interest in the flavour.  
  
That apple pie. It must have been the happiness of understanding that I was that sort of friend you talked about at home. It must have been that flying to Washington had felt more like coming home than it had any right to. It was just the buildup of the day, it wasn’t the apple flavoured dessert, but you don’t know that.  
  
It's not like you had given me much of a choice when it came to loving apple inspired desserts. On the following month of February, I was fourteen then, I’d randomly received a package from Washington. Your note had been as dumb and as heartwarming as the previous ones, the ones I still keep in my bedside table to this day. It had read:  
  
happy st valentines dave!  
  
my dad still talks about how crazy you were for his stupid apple pie. he is way too proud about that! so you better piss yourself this time with how good these cookies are because i made them myself. (well, at least pretend to like them, alright?)  
come back soon so my dad and i can have a cook-off or something.  
  
i don’t know, i miss you.  
  
They were butterscotch apple cookies. I sat down on my bed and ate all eight of them in a row; the thought of waiting until the fourteenth of the month hadn’t even crossed my mind. Not that I had been thinking that I would go ahead and eat all of them in one go, it had just sort of happened.  
  
It had happened in the sort of way that once more, my eyes had become a bit more watery than they should have been, and my tastebuds had sung to the heavens that this was as good as it could ever get for them. I still wasn’t crazy about apples, however I had felt crazily touched by your gesture. I had spent the rest of the night clutching my stomach and regretting my impulsive eating, but mostly, I was missing you too.  
  
No, I had started loving apples as much as you thought that I did on that summer before our junior year. You had gotten my brother to drive us to an apple orchard. It was ridiculous because you’d come to my place so prepared that year that it had felt as if you were the one who’d spent your childhood in Houston.  
  
Regardless, you’d spent all day with me picking apples. You’d said the reason you were sacrificing your day for ‘this lame shit’ was because that excursion was my early sixteenth birthday present, and that I certainly shouldn’t expect anything else when December finally rolled around. Not true, you’d still sent me a package for my birthday.  
  
But... The countless rows of apple trees. The way you had looked while the sun was setting. The taste of the apples we had on our way back home in the car. It had felt as if that day had been misplaced in my timeline. As if it belonged to my childhood rather than anywhere else.  
  
I never told you, but it had been important to me. To feel as if I had spent an entire one of those childhood days with you alongside me, rather than connected by two computer screens. I never told you, but that night, you were in my bed and I was on the mattress we had set out on my bedroom floor, you kept sneaking smiles at me... And, for once, I kept sneaking them back. That’s how we had fallen asleep, and from that day on I had accepted that maybe you could have the upper hand on me if you were to offer me anything that has to do with apples.  
  
The knowledge doesn’t escape you, but you don’t really use it to your advantage. It’s a bit as if you use it to my advantage in fact, in a secret way to uplift me when I need it.  
  
Tonight is different. Different is a weird word to use though because you’ve tried having this conversation with me for years now. It has become a monthly thing by now however. I know you’re still not trying to take advantage of me, it just so happens that you believe that were I to be uplifted, I’d come to agree to this. Because it’s the right thing to do, or so you say.  
  
“So, should I keep the recipe?”  
  
It’s kind of hard to think about these outcomes though when I’m halfway through the apple cinnamon burek you made. There’s more of the pastries resting by the stove, and I know you’ll put them in a tupperware later tonight so that I can bring them back to my place.  
  
“Uh, duh? I could live off of this, like holy shit.”  
  
You’d already been smiling though, you could already tell. It helped that I had scooped three more spoonfuls into my mouth before taking the time to reply.  
  
Your fork is sitting in your plate though. You’ve been doing it for years, but I’m still happy every time you get a fork for yourself, and a spoon for me instead. Because it’s an unspoken preference you’ve never questioned or pointed out. You’re not thinking about dessert, I can tell as much. You’re thinking about the conversation you’ve actually been meaning to bring up tonight.  
  
No matter which manner you opt for, introducing the topic is always somewhat cringe worthy. Well, I always have to bite down the urge to physically wince at these sorts of conversations. I’d much rather you keep eating rather than start on this again. I know how it’s going to go, you’ll start talking about it, and I’ll slide your plate towards me while you do, and we will be getting nowhere.  
  
“You know, we could be spending more than a single meal a day together.”  
  
It’s one of your smoother transitions, but your nervousness is tangible.  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
I don’t bite the words out with as much harshness as I could have predicted. The guilt usually hits me once I’m by myself again, but you seem a lot more earnest than usual already. Maybe desperate, but I don’t particularly like attributing that word to you, or believing that anything relating to me could have that sort of impact on you.  
  
“Yeah well, I want you to be eating more than one meal a day. And if you’re staying here you’re a lot less likely to forget. And you’ll have someone to eat with always, that’s a lot more fun, no?”  
  
You see through my words and know my habits just as well as if we were already sharing a place though. I get that that must not be the upside you’re looking for, but...  
  
“I come over every night for that anyway, don’t I? Isn’t that good enough?”  
  
I can read on your face that now my words are getting snappy. You’re not stupid. I’m being defensive in an effort to push you back because I’m running out of reasonable justifications to turn you down, and you always have a new approach lined up to try again.  
  
“It’s not a question of being good enough, Dave. I’m just making sure that you know that the offer is still there.”  
  
Your hands move while you speak. I try not to stare. I think you should pick up your fork instead, but even then I’d probably stare at them. It would just help if you weren’t currently being so vocally emotional. Well, maybe emotional isn’t the best word to use. It would help if you weren’t so vocally supportive.  
  
The thing that you don’t get is that it almost always is a question of being good enough. And were your support to be a bit more subtle, maybe it would be easier to accept whilst remaining as undeserving as I am.  
  
“You don’t have to though. I already know. Hell, the whole world knows that I know.”  
  
My voice isn’t sounding out the way I want it to, and I can tell from the strain in your gaze that it’s because it’s coming out as tired, exhausted, finished with this whole thing.  
  
“I just don’t want you to forget that you’ll always be welcome here.”  
  
Your tone isn’t obviously sad. It’s sad enough for it to be heartbreakingly so however. You always throw the invitation at me as if it were a lifebuoy though. You could just tell me that you want me to stay here. You don’t have to pass it off as a rescue.  
  
Then again, maybe you don’t want that. Maybe your sadness really is a cause of your belief that I need this and that I am keeping myself from being happy.  
  
“Are you going to eat that?” I ask you predictably.  
  
I already slide the plate towards me as you respond with the predictable, “Made it for you, take it.”  
  
I don’t bother swapping the utensils and end up with your fork instead. It tastes different, but not worse.  
  
You’ve clasped your hands together over the table, I don’t stare though, I look up to your mouth and there’s already a sigh forming there. You don’t let it form, you transform it into words. I can’t help but to envy the control you have over yourself.  
  
“You don’t have to say yes. I just wish you would give it some thought?”  
  
Your right eyebrow lifts. You’re trying to be provocative. It’s not going to work. We still have never been in a fight up to date, and this won’t be our first one.  
  
“But I have. I thought about it the first time you asked me, when you moved out of the dorms. Three years ago. I don’t get why I’m getting formal monthly inquiries about that decision now.”  
  
You’re starting to look a bit remorseful. I guess it’s better than the alternative. You don’t take it as an insult, you understand that... Well, you might understand my reasons better than I do myself. That’s probably why you keep pushing.  
  
My expression must match yours. Remorse all around the table. So I finish your plate instead of lingering on that bitter setup.  
  
“Look, I know it’s been a tough year...” I decide not to let you finish that thought because your tone is telling me you’re going in for the jugular.  
  
“For me. It’s been a tough year for me.”  
  
It really must not sound all that sincere as I say it through my last bite. How rough can it all be? I taste nothing but apple and cinnamon. I spend my nights with one of the most important figures in my life. How tough has it really been?  
  
It must have been anyway though because you answer with; “On everyone. If it’s a tough year for you, it’s a tough year for all of us.”  
  
“Oh, alright, so it’s my fault now?”  
  
Your hands unfold and you lay them flat onto the table instead. You’re telling me, there’s no need to be defensive. I know that there isn’t.  
  
“It’s not easy to watch you struggle.” There’s a small comfort in the way your voice isn’t overly cautious, but it’s destabilizing all the same.  
  
I had never considered myself to be struggling until everyone had started pointing it out. Until you had started pointing it out.  
  
If the labels were up to me, I’d probably say that things have been the opposite of a struggle. In the past, in contrast, it had been a struggle. A constant fight to be adequate, up with the standard; simply being good enough.  
  
I’ve just come to accept that I haven’t made it, and that it’s alright to stop reaching for it. It would be best if you could just let it be. But there’s no easy way of telling you that. There’s no easy way of telling you that I’m dealing with these things by myself and that I don’t need you in the middle of them.  
  
“What’s your point?”  
  
I’m trying to nudge you towards cutting to the chase. I stack up both our plates too. Just as I push my chair backwards, you stop me.  
  
“You don’t have to do the dishes tonight.”  
  
You’re buying yourself some time. Every night, when I do the dishes, it’s the indicator that I’m ready to leave. You want to use that timeframe to try to convince me tonight. I’d really rather help you out with the dishes.  
  
I still stand up anyway. I know what you’d meant, you want me to use the time before the next scheduled bus back to my neighbourhood to discuss our separated living arrangement. I’ll just use your words to see myself out early instead.  
  
Your expression is agitated as you mirror my action. It hurts too much to stay silent.  
  
“So what, Egbert? You don’t think I’m doing well enough by myself and you just figure I need you to be able to stand on my own two legs?”  
  
Because I haven’t used your first name, you’ve understood that you are fighting a losing battle. The simple slip-up is an obvious sign that I’m not investing myself in this exchange. I’m halfway to your front door when you find the way to retort.  
  
You simply say; “Would it be so bad if you needed me?”  
  
I refuse to acknowledge anything that you do or say as desperate. It’s sounding close though, so I make the colossal effort to not turn back towards you.  
  
“I’ll meet you after work, alright? I’ll help you cook this time.”  
  
This past year hasn’t been a struggle. But tying up my shoelaces is a struggle. I know you’re staring at me. I know that I’m refusing to look at you. And I know that my voice had come out as pained. But I don’t know why that is. I leave my right shoe untied.  
  
“Dave...”  
  
“I’m sorry, I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
Putting my arms through my jacket’s sleeves is a little less challenging and I manage to pat the spot over my pocket to check for my bus pass without too much embarrassment. But that’s it. That’s the only instant I give you before heading out the door. Not even a goodbye.  
  
I race down the stairs too. It’s only one level down to reach the ground, but it takes me only a few seconds to find myself in the cold night air.  
  
I could feel worse about my exit than I do, mostly because I know that we’ll be together tomorrow and that this will mean nothing by then and that we can try to have the same argument a month from now again.  
  
Would it be so bad if I needed you?  
  
There is at least a dozen of answers forming in my mind at once. None of them, I can get past the first few words. I don’t know the answer. I’m not interested in the answer.  
  
Waiting for the bus helps. But once I’m seated, I remember that I had forgotten to take the rest of your dessert home. For a few moments, I strongly consider heading back to your place. Apologize. Maybe... Seriously discuss moving in.  
  
The doors to the bus shut and I remember that that would all be a terrible idea. Still, there’s a distant urge to cry.  
  
I don’t. Because it’s not worth it. Because I’ll come back tomorrow and we can eat those then. Tomorrow will be easier and you won’t... Well, whatever tonight has been. Tomorrow, things won’t seem so complicated.  
  
It’s still difficult to keep a straight face though, so I pull out my phone from my left pocket, where it leans nicely against my bus pass.  
  
i cant wait to see you tomorrow  
  
Yeah. That won’t convince you that I don’t want to move in with you. But you answer straight away regardless. I feel a lot better.


	2. Go Hand in Hand

You like to insist on being the one to purchase the tickets at the cinema. For quite some time I had gotten away with doing it myself. I always make sure to be ahead of schedules, and I’ve always understood that that isn’t specifically one of your strong points. It’s not that much of a trouble, I could make the reservations from my phone, and then once here it was only a matter of a few words to get them.

You don’t insist on being the one to purchase under the guise of some chivalrous ideology however. You like to insist on being the one to purchase the tickets at the cinema so that you can talk incessantly to whomever has been unlucky enough to take up a job at the movie theater.

It’s not a flaw of yours. It’s not even anything close to bad. Especially with how much our cinema get-togethers have changed over the years.

When we had both still been in school we would head to the movies on the busiest day of the week. On Tuesdays because Tuesdays were priced half off. It had happened more than once that we’d ended up watching a different film than anticipated, only because our first pick had been sold out right before our eyes. Back then, had you tried to engage into passionate conversation with an employee, there would have been an uproar in the lineup.

Things are better now. If we have to go watch a film together, which, yes, often happens, we go to the Saturday matinee showing, at one in the afternoon. It’s almost as cheap as Tuesday nights.

I like these. There had always been something rushed about going out on a Tuesday after class. There was a rush to get there, and then a rush to make our separate ways afterwards. It had always felt strangely isolating, even though I had just spent the evening watching a film with my very best friend. For a while, you’d relied a lot more on renting blu-rays instead of watching newer releases that were only out on big screen. I’d been really impressed, I had never brought my discomfort up with you.

A few times, I had wondered if maybe there was a possibility that you had felt the same way as I had, and if that had been why you’d changed your habits.

This is a newer tradition. It had started the summer after our graduation, you were about to get started with your master’s, and I was starting at my workplace, luckily enough, just a few weeks away from that Friday night.

I’d already put my sneakers back on. You hadn’t hinted that you had needed me to stick around more than usual. But for some reason, you’d grabbed my elbow, and you’d said:

“We need to catch a movie tomorrow.”

When I’d moved to shrug my arm out of your hold, you hadn’t budged.

“The only showing that works for me is the earliest one,” you’d continued.

Stay over. You hadn’t needed to be explicit to make it clear. That’s honestly the first I remember of me crashing at your place.

I had thought of it as a ruse, but it might not have been. You had let me act as if I were at my own place, given me all of the space that I had been able to take. I’d slept on your couch and you’d woken me up barely an hour before the film was starting.

It’s an odd sort of memory that I don’t quite remember so clearly. We’d made a habit out of this outcome however.

It was better now.

Last night, I’d come over for diner knowing full well to bring my toothbrush and a change of clothes. We’d spent most of the night together. When we do this now, there’s rarely that space you’d left for me that very first time you’d asked me to stay. Friday nights, when you happen to have plans to see a new showing, consist of more talk than we usually get done over the course of the week.

You tend to keep me up as long as possible. This always, always, no matter how much I want to see the film as well, results in me falling asleep with my forehead pressed to your shoulder at the cinema.   
Yesterday was no exception to that rule. By the time we’d both been showered and ready for bed, we’d decided to take seat on your kitchen counters and to ask each other pointless questions. About the colour of our souls, about which musical note could express our identity, about how long we could hold our breath underwater.

My favourite of yours had been; “Which one of your memories are you the most scared of losing?”

You’d kept me up until six in the morning with video games afterwards. I don’t remember falling asleep. But I remember the way your voice had sounded as I had started drifting off. You’d kept calling my name, in the hopes of keeping me up, I’m sure, but it was a nice thing to hear as I fell asleep regardless.

I’m drained already. You’re purchasing the tickets. I’m resisting the idea of moving towards a wall to lean against it fully. The place is empty. It gives you ample chance to talk away with the salesgirl.   
I always pretend to be annoyed with you when you pull off these sorts of things. I do actually like it though, well, when I’m not as tired as I happen to be today.

I know your chatter is relevant. You are strictly speaking of the movie you are about to go see. That’s always how it is with you. You’ve even gotten us free tickets in the past, just from you impressing employees with your interest and knowledge. I used to tell you that you should end up in the film industry. You’d never really listened to that scenario that much, you’d told me how convincing your father had been about pursuing a career with a bit more stability. You say you are more than happy being a humble fan on the sidelines.

I’m fine with that too. I’m fine with whatever you want to be. I’m fine with the fact that we will simultaneously be the last ones and the first ones in the show room. Last because you will talk until you are seconds away from missing out on trailers, which happen to be my absolute favourite part of going out to the movies, and first because no one else is here on a Saturday matinee.

I have a theory that you sleep during your Friday classes. I refuse to accept that staying up will tire me so thoroughly, but will leave you untouched like this. I can’t hear a word you’re saying, I’ve put myself to the side, with the hopes of maybe sleeping while standing, the shades offer a pretty practical escape for some shuteye after all. I can’t shut my eyes though, because you are loud and passionate, and maybe not loud enough for me to catch the gist of your conversation, but passionate enough that I can follow every angle your hands are making as you speak.

Your hands are so stupid and I love them so much.

There is something that has stuck with me for many years now. You’d told me, when we had been kids and we hadn’t yet seen each other face to face, and when we weren’t good enough to come up with the sort of questions we’d asked each other late last night; that your hands were your favourite physical attribute. You were pretty adamant about them and about how friends of your father’s, concert pianists and the likes, had said you had perfect hands.

It was true enough. You’d pressed our hands together to compare size when we had met, palm to palm, and your hands did seem a lot superior to mine aesthetically. They had been nimble and elegant and all of those other positive things you can say about something as strange as hands when you had played something on the piano for me, to show off your skills.

They hadn’t held any sort of importance to me though. I just remembered that you’d once told me this was the thing about yourself that you were confident in, proud of, but maybe that had already changed by the time we had met. I don’t know. But that had been the extent of how I had felt about them.

That had changed. It had changed way back then already. The last night of my stay. We had spent the day in Seattle, your father had booked a hotel room under the pretext that my plane was leaving early morning. I had really appreciated that he wanted me to discover the city and had mumbled my thanks just about hundreds of times under my breath throughout the day.

We’d finished the day by going to the restaurant where your parents had had their first date. You seemed a bit distant when your father had retold that night for me, but I think I can understand that. I didn’t ask more questions than necessary.

The shift in what I saw had been so quick. I’d excused myself to the bathroom, had managed to trip on my way there, you didn’t see, I don’t think so. By now though, you’ve seen me trip too many times for me to possibly save face. And still then, your hands were nice in a classical definition of beauty, but fairly unremarkable. When I’d walked back to our table though, you were deep in conversation with your father. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but he was listening intently to whatever it was you were trying to express. You used a lot of hand gestures. And from far away, the slope of your wrist seemed very steep and pronounced. Your hands were frail looking, despite all the force you were putting into moving them. Obviously, you have strong hands, but it was the first time I’d noticed that they had a delicate shape. Or the first time I’d come to use that term to describe them.

And as I watch you now, from far away, just as I had seen you then. You speaking, with an audience of one, listening very carefully, gesturing just as much as when you were a young teenager... I know that there probably hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of your hands.

It was the second time we’d been able to spend time together that I had deciphered what I really liked about the shape of your wrists and hands. I haven’t brought it up with you, or with anyone really because I’m afraid I won’t be understood. As something important to myself, I don’t want to expose it only for it to go misinterpreted or to be laughed at.

The thing about your hands is that they seem so breakable. But whenever you move them, you seem so confident, so full of this strength of character that I rarely see in anyone else. I guess, I guess I just find it really beautiful. I feel like you highlight what it means to be strong despite weakness. Because we’re probably all fragile, our bones can so easily snap and break, but you act so strong. It’s just, nice to think about. To think about the people who are stronger on the inside than their body will ever be.

You’re heading towards me now. Your grin is warm and full of energy and no one at all is able to tell that you went to bed after the sun had come up. You’re waving the two tickets at me triumphantly, and I try not to stare at the way your slender fingers hold them up.

I try not to stare because I’m too tired and it feels like it’s too early in the day for me to be introspective. For me to start thinking about how I’m not like you. How my interior is so lousily weak that even my pathetic outer shell could take a better hit than it could.

“This is going to be amazing! Well, the lady over there told me that she’s seen it and that she didn’t like it, but whatever. We can come have a hearty debate with her after it’s over. Assuming her shift won’t be over by then.”

You’re speaking quickly now. And you’ve used your hands to point at the spot you were standing in just a minute ago. You look beautiful and it’s hard for me to think about it. I should be thinking about the film and yes the possibility of debates, I could maybe join in. But I’m tired and you’re going to hand me my ticket eventually and your hand will come in contact with mine and the contrast is going to hurt even more so then.

“Hey, Dave?”

The truth remains that it often feels like under my skin, where all my organs should be, it’s just knots and coils. Something all bunched up that can’t allow me to breathe.

Both your hands land on my shoulders, and it’s a jolt. I hadn’t even registered you pocketing the tickets away.

“Hey,” you insist.

So, against every instinct, I answer you with, “Hey.”

“Whatcha thinking of?”

I’m not quick enough to answer. Maybe something gives me away. The awkward drop of my gaze when I find myself unable to even keep myself from staring at your hands, I would have to really obviously look down to my shoulder to do so. Or maybe it’s the slight tilt of my head because I’d rather turn away a bit then let you scrutinize me so intensely and so openly. Maybe it’s the tightening of my throat and the painful motion of swallowing that I put myself through for some reason.

Your reaction is immediate. Your hands slide and you wrap your arms around me. They go over my arms though, and I can’t really move to return the hug, except maybe bend my arm to pat your lower back lightly, as if trying to maintain the pretense that I don’t need this right now. But you squeeze me tight and step in close and it’s really, really hard to breathe.

Of course, in enough of a panic, I look around and try to see who’s laughing at us. Who’s laughing at the fact that I am so deeply aware that you are better than me in everything that matters that, am I to get a few hours of sleep less, the information becomes raw and stinging. No one’s laughing of course, it’s just you and me, like it most often always is.

So I give up. I let both my arms hang, useless, and I push my forehead down to your shoulder to keep me from focusing on backgrounds and settings that should never matter as much as you do.

“You doing ok?” Your voice is mostly whispered and that helps a lot too.

I try not to think about the way everything feels tied up in my stomach.

“Fabulous.” My voice is strangled and once again it reminds me that I’m weaker than my own body, even though there is a very high number of small things that could completely wreck my body in no time. Just like everyone else.

I think it’s almost enough for you to accept whatever look you’d seen on me and to stop coddling me. In any case, you rub my back once, maybe a bit too vigorously, then push me further into you before letting your arms drop. It leaves us standing really intimately close when we both straighten up. It would take a millisecond for my hand to grab yours. But I’m not thinking about that.

“We should go in, yeah? We can’t miss any of those trailers. I know how you love those.”

Your voice is still soft, still only meant for me. And I feel a lot younger than I am. I feel like the child who needs to be comforted when thinking of the monsters under the bed, even though everyone knows there are none down there.

I feel like a child. Because you’re taking that soft voice, and you’re making sure I get to do my favourite thing, and you’re pointing out that you know what my favourite thing is, just to remind me that you do in fact care about me. Even if your hands are beautiful and your spirit greater than the flimsy bodies we’ve been given.

“Yeah, man, if we miss them, I’ll never forgive you.”

Of course, I rush forward towards the ticket guy, you have to trot up behind me so that you can actually give me my ticket. And then I rush towards our cinema room, and you have to catch up with me once again to point me into the right direction. All the while, I’m hoping that maybe I could come to grab your hand, or that you could come to grab mine.

The room is empty, predictably enough. We take our usual seats naturally. Center row, but actually a bit to the left from the very center.

Three out of five trailers are really good. I comment on all of them out loud, unafraid to break the silence and darkness of the large room. You make your own comments back, but your voice is considerably more hushed than mine.

I don’t know if you know this. But trailers are my favourite because I can always reimagine us coming back to one of these films that are announced. The promise of a continued shared future has a strong impact on me.

I sleep through the first half of the movie, even though it’s usually the other way around. You’d hugged me though, so that physical barrier had already been broken for the day.

I slept with the side of my head rested on your shoulder. Though I wanted but did not hold your hand, I felt pretty distinctively in one moment, when I had almost woken up, that you had your fingers spread in my hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!


	3. Love Begets Love

You have the keys to my apartment. I have the keys to yours.

I was expecting you when I got home, half past five. You weren’t there, but your jacket was there, resting over the back of the armchair.

Understandable, it’s your armchair after all. It had belonged to your grandmother and you hadn’t been able to leave it behind when you’d come to this city. It hadn’t fit into your dorm room though, and it had stayed with me in my apartment that first year of college. It had never left my apartment. That’s fine by me. It only gets used when you come over, and, yeah, maybe you should come over more, but as it is I am happy to be trusted with this sort of family heirloom.

I do know that maybe it stays over because it’s convenient and not necessarily as an act of trust.

Not that it matters. It doesn’t strictly only get used when you come over, that wasn’t completely true. Sometimes, when I’m too lonely to think clearly, I curl up in it and force myself to remember how lucky I am.

Yesterday, I had fallen asleep in it. I hadn’t even turned on the television. I had tried, but nothing had really fit. The screen had been as dark as the room, and as dark as my shades. They had never made it off my face. I must have rubbed at my face for a good five minutes this morning when I’d finally removed them.

I had still been wearing yesterday’s clothes too. I was beyond uncomfortable, but thankfully, as I had fallen asleep when it had barely just darkened outside as well, I had woken up much earlier than required.

I had taken an hour long shower and by the time I had stepped out of it, the sun had reappeared in the sky again.

I wanted to climb back into your armchair. The idea of doing anything else had been... Upsetting.

I’d gone to work anyway, and if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gone at all.

I hadn’t shown up for diner last night. That meant you were going to come over today instead. That’s how it’s been in the past. I would say it’s sort of part of these silently established rules.

You were going to come over, pat me on the shoulder, and I would tell you that; yeah, it’s fine, yeah, it’s already passed. But I couldn’t. Because it hasn’t passed. And you’re the sort of friend who will stay with me throughout the entire day and ignore the rest of your responsibilities if I need you here, even if that need is completely unjustified.

I need you here, but I don’t want you here. Not today. I wanted you to go to your classes, maybe have the leftovers from yesterday as lunch today, because I hadn’t been there to eat the second share of food. I didn’t want you to come over and I didn't want to find myself lying to you and telling you that; yeah, it’s fine, yeah, it’s already passed. Because that’s the sort of pressure you feel when someone is there with you, isn’t it? It becomes so flagrantly real how imaginary and unnecessary my unease is if I’m next to someone. It’s better to act as if it’s already gone when I’m in those sorts of situations.

I’d gone to work not by some miracle of my ethics, but rather by my cowardice and my fear of our meeting.

Your jacket’s resting on your armchair here at my place though, and I can’t help but to wonder if you might have just camped out here all day long awaiting my return. You’re more responsible than that though. I still feel like checking for clues that will indicate at what time you’d arrived. I don’t.

I curl up in your seat. I don’t mean to press my cheek to the inside of your jacket, it just happens.

The moment is fleeting. The next thing I know, you’re turning the key in the lock, and you’ve come back home. Well, not really. It’s not your home, even though your armchair is here, and I’m here too. We don’t really have a shared home. And I don’t think that that will ever happen.

I jump to my feet, but you don’t even bat an eyelash.

“It’s getting kind of chilly outside,” you announce it as if it were the most natural opening line.

I take it for what it is and sit back down. You still don’t bat an eyelash. It’s the first time you see me taking this seat, but maybe it wasn’t that much of a secret in the first place.

“Why’d you leave your jacket then?” I point over my shoulder to the discarded item, but you seem ahead of me, your answer ready to go.

“Wanted you to know I was coming back.”

You’re still so natural, your steps leading you directly from the door to my very spot, taking off your sneakers somewhere midway; I don’t mind where you leave them. There’s not enough space for the both of us to be sitting here, but you still squeeze in right beside me. The white cardboard box you’d been carrying is transferred to my lap instead. There’s not enough space, but it’s not uncomfortable.

“It’s a pretty random spot, what if I hadn’t seen it?”

“It’s not random,” you tell me immediately.

It’s not random because I’m feeling so out of it that I hadn’t even show up last night which of course meant I had spent the night in this very spot. But you wouldn’t know that. I know that there isn’t a way for you to know that. You’re acting like you do know though.

I focus on your offering instead. It’s pretty obvious what it’s going to be. There’s that golden logo on the box. It’s the Belgian chocolate café a few blocks away from your place. Whenever you get invited to a formal diner, or when you need to make up something to someone, or simply want to cheer someone up, because you have that sort of capacity that I never use myself, you get a box of chocolates from the place.

The first time you’d taken me there you’d gone to pick out chocolates for your thesis director, it was your first time meeting her. I’d laughed a lot and said your chocolate strategy was stupid, one day you were going to be unknowingly offering one of these boxes to a damn diabetic. Your counter was offering me a similar box. I’d turned down every type of chocolate you’d pointed out, but I had pointed to the cake display instead and had begged you to get me the apple crumble they sold there.

You’d scoffed something that sounded like an ‘of course, of course’ but from that moment on, you’d always get me one whenever you needed a chocolate fix from the place.

The box is warm and I have to wonder if you’d asked them to warm the crumble up before bringing it back here. I have to wonder how you’d kept it warm for the entire bus ride here. And I have to wonder, seeing as going to your place or the whereabouts and coming back takes an hour, just how much of your day you’ve thrown away just waiting for me to crawl back home.

You don’t seem irritated or impatient though. Not that you ever do.

“Can I eat this on your chair?”

“Go for it.”

You have that stupid sort of grin on your face. And the sort of look in your eyes that tells me it’s just as much mine as it is yours. You’re still way too close for this to be comfortable, and yet it does manage to be a lot more comforting than it had been without you.

I start eating the damn thing, and if it was your idea of a peace offering, or a way to crack me open, I’m making this way too easy on you. I would usually take a spoon to eat this, but I find that just my fingers will do in this kind of moment. It hits me then and there that I don’t remember what was the last thing that I had ingested. If I know myself well enough, it was probably the last diner we had had together.

I eat it way too fast. You stay quiet the entire time, and I am not sure if it’s my imagination, but it feels as if you keep your gaze on me the whole time too. You stay quiet, and it gets impossibly hard to coordinate breathing and eating. It’s even harder to not let myself sniff too audibly. It’s hard because you’re right there and everything feels familiar in the oddest of ways.

For a moment, it seems as if you may hold my hand, so I start playing with the edges of the emptied cardboard box instead.

“Did you want to stay here for diner tonight?” You ask me as if I hadn’t just stuffed all of that into my mouth in front of you.

I deflate a little bit more, even with the taste lingering over my lips and the sated sensation slowly sweeping over me.

“I just ate, but if you want to use my kitchen for yourself, go ahead.”

“How do you feel?”

The question you offer in answer doesn’t miss a beat, no matter how unassociated it should be from my own question. I’m telling you you are free to use my kitchen. I’m letting you stay. But you ask me how I feel, you’re asking me if I feel too unwell to eat. Where am I at right now? Where was I last night? Why wasn’t I on par with you?

“I feel like I need to go make use of my recycling bin.”

So, of course, I flee. At least I don’t waste time, it’s not like I stay in the kitchen for longer than necessary. I don’t take the chance to catch my breath or to sort myself out again. I simply go to the kitchen and recycle the box the dessert had came in. I had started making tears in the edges of the cardboard with my fingers to distract myself when we had been talking, however brief might it have been.

The reason I had needed to hop out of our seat though was because I wasn’t ready for it to be our seat. Or, in any case, now was not the moment to be glued to the hip and to have your breath ghosting over my neck.

You only really move to fill out your usual spot once I’ve come back and have taken refuge on my couch. You bring both your arms over the armrests. There’s nothing in your demeanor that speaks of being offended. It doesn’t keep me from being ashamed of myself. I wish it could be as easy as returning to your side and falling all over you and just hugging it all out until it was all gone.

I think that scenario speaks for itself though. It’s not realistic, it’s not convenient, it’s not practical, it’s not useful, it’s not anything that can be of help to me right now.

“So, on a scale of one to ten?”

I decide to lay down on the couch instead. My legs dangle off of it, but I keep my head on the cushions, not over the armrest. My head’s closest to you, not my feet, and having that definite physical barrier of the armrest between us is going to help now. I want to keep it. I wish you wouldn’t ask. I wish you’d leave it be. I wish you’d leave me be.

“Does it matter?”

“Throw me a bone, I can’t help if you don’t give me anything to go on.”

It’s not your style to ask for it in that fashion. You don’t usually need me to give you anything to find something to go on. My chest feels as if it’s seizing up, as if underneath my skin there isn’t anything but knots.

The word ‘help’ makes it feel as if all of those knots are tightening, lodging themselves permanently in my being.

“I didn’t ask for help.”

“You don’t need to.”

That doesn’t sit well with me either. I don’t need to ask for your help, but I need to give you something to go on when you’re trying it out. You’re not being unfair, I remind myself, but this whole scenario makes things seem unfair.

You have your own initiative, like walking in here uninvited, and that’s great by me because I never want to ask. But when you ask me to ask, it just all falls apart for me.

“Well, I really don’t need your help, Egbert.”

I sit up, this might not be the best time to lay down in such a defeated way after all. I can’t look at you though, I stare at the dark television screen instead. I know where this is going. We are going to fight. Even if we haven’t in the past, I can still recognize the tension.

“Then just tell me what you need.”

Maybe, reconsidering it, there won’t be a fight between us. You sound just as put together as before, I don’t even have to glance over to know your sitting position has remained unmoved. You’re relaxed, as if this weren’t my place, but yours. It’s your environment and you can relax. I can’t, because I’m still fighting, and if it isn’t with you, it’s definitely only with myself.

“I need you to stop telling me what to do.”

“I’m not...”

“Yes, you definitely are.” Deep breath. “Can you just let it go? It shouldn’t be this much of a big deal to you if I’m happy or not.”

My head feels loud, even though the room is quiet. Even though it’s silent now, it’s nothing but heavy noise to me.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, alright? Just look at me, I promise I’m not pressuring you to feel differently.”

It’s hard to judge if your words are honest or not because your tone hasn’t dipped into any other new territories. It’s still intimidatingly even. Things are more unfair than ever though because it seems I might have thrown you a bone without even really meaning to.

Maybe it’s the way my voice shook though and not the words I had spoken. I didn’t have to tell you I felt pressured. Event though you’re not really pressuring me, you’re not really at fault. My feelings are still plain for you to see, no matter how unjustified they might be.

Looking at you isn’t something I specifically want to do, but I still manage. I still manage to angle myself towards you and to establish eye contact. Even if my expression has slipped into something more pained than it has any right to be.

You’re sitting just the same as before, or almost. You’re leaning towards me. There’s this energy I can feel coming from you, like you know you’re about to break through to me, like you know you’re about to finally get somewhere with these knots and these coils that I have to begrudgingly call my feelings.

“Nothing’s wrong, you can stop breaking your back trying to make things right for me.”

My words are a whispered mess. I know you aren’t breaking your back, you’re on top of your game, you always are.

Sometimes I’d say that I’m drowning, and you’re over the ice, marching calmly, and it’s easy for me to glance up and to see how calm you can remain as I fight just to find a way back up.

You try to keep me from drowning. I can’t help but to think that it might help if you dove into the water and helped from there instead.

But I don’t want that, I don’t want that, I don’t want that.

“I know nothing’s wrong, I just want to be here for you.”

I know the words taste wrong on your tongue, or I hope that you can realize it thanks to the way my facial expression intensifies.

I wish you could have just used the word ‘with’ instead of ‘for’. I just...

“I just wish someone loved me.”

I don’t know when I’d gotten up. My feet are carrying me in circles I’m not trying to make. I don’t feel in my right mind, or I don’t feel like I’m in my mind at all and it increasingly becomes bothersome to have you here seeing this. But you’ve gotten up too, and I’m not sure when that had happened either. You’re not pacing like I am. You’ve put yours hands up, your palms towards me. A surrender I can’t come to understand.

“I love you.”

I was ready for that though, and my pacing doesn’t pause as I push it aside. “You don’t love me. I love you.”

You intercept my circles. My feet halt and it feels as if my heels are slipping through the floorboards. Melting, or disintegrating, or something completely beyond my reality in any case. Your hands are still up, your face is still calm, I stop pacing and the setting of my apartment starts to become visible again.

“The world loves you, Dave.” Your voice gets lower and my spine slumps with every notch of volume you lose. “The strangers you smile at, they love you. And the bus drivers you’re always so obnoxiously sweet to. All those people who check your blogs. Those pigeons you feed when we go out on walks, and the spiders you save, and...”

And it’s obvious what you’re doing. The requirements for the examples I’ll believe is that they don’t know me well, or can’t know me well. You think it’s the only type of love I’ll accept.

“And one day I can show you that I love you,” you finish cleanly, doubtlessly.

I laugh, because you show me all the damn time, I know that you show me.

You put your hands down, and it registers on your face before it does in my mind that my laughter isn’t quite laughter anymore.

You let me sit in your chair with you for the rest of the night, and it finally helps a lot.


	4. A Poem Should not Mean. But Be.

I stare at your knuckles as you tap out a beat over your textbook. It takes a few seconds for you to feel that it’s a meaningful stare, that my gaze is not pulling away.

You jerk your head before meeting my eye, to flip your bangs out of your eyesight. Your hair’s gotten long again. You’ll be cutting it again soon; I’m giving it a week. Your smile is incredibly refreshing, it seems to me that it’s symmetrically destined to be your default expression.

Your teeth look especially good today, white and straight.

I hadn’t been expecting that honest smile. We’d spent most of today in here, and it was going to go into the night, I’m sure, despite it being Friday. You had a lot on your plate right now, a lot of things to hand in and to get together. Though I’m sure that on some level studying isn’t the bane of your existence, going on our fourth hour in the library, I wouldn’t have expected the kind twist of your lips.

It’s warm, it’s inviting, it’s the sort of smile that could convince me that you’re extremely overwhelmed and overjoyed by my presence here with you.

You bring your hand up and I startle a bit. Not that I would know, but it looks and feels as if you are about to graze your fingertips over my cheek. Something corny like that, I’m not sure. But it raises my awareness enough for me to push the paper over to your side of the table, quickly drawing the attention away from me and towards the words I had written instead.

Your hand pulls back and your fingertips graze over the raised texture of the ink I had used. Your smile hasn’t changed and I imagine the way your hand would have felt against my skin instead. That had probably just been in my mind though.

“Was that quick or am I completely losing track of time here?”

I expect you to turn around and to look out the window, to witness just how low the sun is now and how close it is to pulling back the blanket of night, but you don’t, your eyes stay focused on me.   
I reply with a whisper matching yours, “Fairly quick. Not more than seven minutes.”

You blindly reach outwards and pat my hand uncoordinatedly as you look down at the paper, surely reading the words even as your smile only seems to expand. The pat of the hand is probably your idea of a silent way of telling me ‘good job’ but it’s torture keeping my hand there. I either want to pull it back harshly or to cover yours with mine, hold it for the rest of your study session here.

Maybe that’s why you seem so warm and positive towards me right now. Any distraction from this work must be a spark of light and of hope, I’ll bet. The library is mostly vacant, I can’t imagine how fed up you must be with this work. I’m only here as support and even I’m starting to look out the window longingly a little too often.

“I mean, it’s not very long,” I explain hurriedly. It unnerves me to watch others read my writings in front of me, and you are definitely no exception to that rule.

You understand though, and your fingers wrap fully around my hand. Your gaze does not pull away from the poem however.

“Might be short, but meaningful, right? Pretty impressive that you can pull something meaningful out in little to no time.”

“Yeah, well...”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you’d thought of it before today.”

You look up again, finally, and I can’t help but to snatch the piece of paper back. Thus freeing my hand from yours and steadying my heartbeat.

“I’m not sure I get it though.”

You rest your chin on your hand and your smile widens stupidly. Of course this would have been your approach. I should have seen this coming. When you’d noticed my inactivity a few minutes ago and had asked me to write a poem about you, I should have known this is what it would turn into. You just wanted to listen to me talk about you, of course that’s what it was going to be.

One would think I’ve never written a poem for you with that huge grin on your face, and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

You shut your textbook decidedly and rest your elbow over it. I have your full attention, you’re telling me. I grimace slightly as I slowly realize that, actually, after your fourth hour in the library, you were ready to head back home too. That little request had been your timeframe for your final push of studies. And getting to hear what you mean to me was your day’s reward.

It’s a bit embarrassing. It’s not as if I think I’m eloquent enough for my musings to be your special treat.

“You know, it’s actually pretty obvious? I don’t think I need to explain much, Egbert.”

“I don’t get it at all though!”

You shake your head a bit too sharply, and despite the straight line of your mouth, your eyes are wide and alit with the playfulness that easily lets me know that, in fact, you very much do understand it.

There are at least a few hushed swears that make it past my lips as I pick up my chair and move it to your side of the table, to sit as closely as I can to you, the piece of paper safely pressed to my chest as I send you accusing glances.

You’re too good at playing the innocent card though and seem completely unaffected by my sourness.

“I’m not explaining everything though.”

“Aw, c’mon! You told me you thought it was short, it wouldn’t be very hard work!”

My glare intensifies at the whining quality your speech had picked up, but it defeats me regardless and rids me of all the aggressive energy I had wanted to put into my expressions. I put the paper down on the table, in between the two of us.

“I’ll only explain the one worded lines.”

“So a third of it,” you pipe in naturally.

I try not to wither away in embarrassment. You’d read it once, but you’d probably picked up on just about everything that had gone into it regardless. I really don’t need to be doing this. I really don’t, but then again, I can.

I sit sideways onto my chair to face you, and you mimic my movement without me having to tell you to do so. Our knees are already touching but I still ask you to lean a bit closer.

“Ok, here...” I encircle my arms around you, around your shoulders, without really letting my limbs touch you at all. “The first line’s...”

“Encompassed,” you answer without missing your beat to answer.

“Yeah, you didn’t need to memorize the whole god damned thing, Egbert.” You only quirk up an eyebrow and I force myself to explain things, because I surely don’t want to stay still like this for longer than needed. “So, this is you. At the beginning of my life and the space that’s yours inside of it, get it?”

You nod, but I figure you’d already known that before I’d switched sides of the table.

“Alright, and then the fourth line says, dismissed.”

“You’re not going to reject me, are you, Dave?”

I roll my eyes because your smile is a fraction too teasing for me to even think of it twice.

“Well, more or less.” I keep one arm in place, and put my left arm over the top of your head, nudging it down slightly. “Ok, now move, I’m dismissing you.”

I put my right arm back into the circle and you snort and laugh quietly as you let yourself slip through my arms and reposition yourself just a few inches away from the space I had created. “Well, that was me when I try to push you away, pretty self-explanatory, even for you.”

You keep laughing as you duck your head back down and straighten up right into the position I had just pushed you out of.

“And this is me at the next line, right? Reappeared, was it?”

I give you a dark look, but it doesn’t last very long. “Yeah, if I try to vacate the space I’ve made for you in my life, you just slip right back into it.”

You don’t lose the smile, but you do lose some of its frivolity. I have to answer to the soft and honest smile with a quick one of my own. This was starting to be embarrassingly intimate, and I can’t come to understand why I’d wanted to explain it through movements like this.

“Go away again,” I whisper, nudging your head hastily once more. Once you’re gone I move to face the table instead, arms still held out and circled around what has now become nothing. “Transfigured, it’s such a stupid word... But basically, that line’s me switching up the space that I need you to fit into, so that you don’t come back, yeah?”

You laugh eagerly, and I do complain quite a bit when you hop out of your seat, crouch at my feet, put your hands over my knees, and straighten back into the spot in front of me.

“You’re embarrassing me, John,” I tell you under my breath. You don’t seem to believe me.

“Man, look at you tricking me into crawling into your lap.” Before I have time to tell you to shut up, you explain the line for me again. “And then that space is replenished because I’ll just take any space in your life that I can get, right?”

“Something like that, I guess.” It’s getting harder to speak.

Finally, you decide to wrap your arms around my waist and to pull me up into a standing position with you. I hope we don’t get in trouble for hugging in the library. Not that it would make any sense if we did. We’d been calm, productive and quiet for most of the day, we deserved a celebration here.

You don’t hug me for too long though and I scold myself mentally for not grabbing the courage to squeeze you and to keep you close for just a moment or two more. Just that small amount more that I really did need. Too late, I’d let it slip, and you’re already patting me on the shoulder.

“You know, that wasn’t much of an explanation. I’m pretty sure that was just as cryptic as the actual poem. You sure favour abstract ideas, huh?”

I’m feeling confident in revealing more now that your smile has waned a bit, leaving place to a concentrated yet open expression.

“I don’t really know what it means, I just know that it’s true.”

“What’s that? That you can’t get rid of me?”

There’s a slight tone of spitefulness in there, but I step over it.

“That, no matter which way I want to twist it, there’s always going to be this huge space in my life that only you can fill.”

There’s a single moment then when the room feels as if it brightens slightly, even though the day is now on its last rays. It’s something I pick up on very distinctively, regardless of the shades shielding my eyes. Maybe it was something akin to a moment of clarity, the exact moment when your eyes convey to me that we are on the same wavelength, that you’ve perfectly and fully understood what I’ve been trying to communicate in these last five minutes. The only problem is that I don’t quite know what it is that you’ve understood, what it is that I’ve been trying to tell you.

You make a joke to wave it off, I can tell that much. “What, you calling me fat now? Huge space, can’t believe this.” It’s not a very effective joke seeing as your voice is heavy with emotion.

I try to chuckle anyway as I put my chair back into its original spot and help you gather up the many textbooks. We stay hushed until we’ve passed the threshold of the library, the weight of the books is divided evenly in between the two of us. You seem pretty rested for someone who’d pushed in so much effort throughout the last hours. You seem pretty happy and it’s awfully distracting, to be perfectly honest.

“You should quit your job and write all day,” you tell me, voice finally returning to its standard volume now that we could afford it.

“I would die,” I deadpan. This time, it’s not really a question of affordance, it entails a lot more, and I don’t really have to say it out loud either for you to get it.

You shouldn’t get it. You shouldn’t even know that this was a thing for me as a matter of fact. I’ll forever remember that time in our first year out here, when you’d unexplainably showed up in the audience of the poetry slam I was performing in; we hadn’t spoken for two whole days after you’d cracked a joke at me.

Surely it was only me being overly sensitive. I think it balances out though because I probably also felt overly validated when you’d patched things up then and had laughed and told me that my ‘sick rhymes’ sure had come a very long way.

It’s not something that I was supposed to share with you, I don’t think so. And when I write, I mostly only find it stupid. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it though because I’m afraid of deconstructing any of it and finding explanations. I suppose one way to put it is that my poetry, if I even can call it poetry, is very sincere even if I am just as blinded to the meaning of it as anyone else is.

Sometimes you refer to me as ‘the artist’, or the more artistic one in between the two of us. I would never openly ask for you to cut that crap out and to stop saying it, but it bothers me, rubs me the wrong way. Because I could never see myself as an artist, especially not when I’m with you, you who makes smiling seem like an art of itself.

But you’d seen me those few years ago, on stage, struggling to push every word past my lips, and that was something you could never give back to me and something that I could never take away from you. One careless comment, and another careful comment later, we had stayed pretty silent on the subject.

Then all at once, you’d begun requesting writings from me here and there. It hadn’t stopped yet. And I hadn’t missed how the poem had slipped into the half of the books you’re carrying, and not mine.

I wonder what it is that you think that you’re doing with all this senseless rambling that I ever attempt to put on paper. What is it that you see in it? You’re trying to decipher what matters to me, and it only makes me slightly uncomfortable that you do. Mostly because I would never try it myself. These are things I don’t want to know, and it touches me in a way that hurts just a little that you do and that you try.

“Dave?”

I had carried on walking, happy to grip your books tighter because had they not been there I would have started clutching at my chest. A habit I have hopelessly never broken out of. I bring my hand to my chest far too often, and I wonder if you ever notice because I know that if your hand often landed on a part of you, I would undeniably know everything about that small movement.

“Dave!”

Right. I had kept walking, and you had stopped. I stop a bit begrudgingly, turning to face you. You liked to walk everywhere. I liked to take the bus everywhere. And our friends always berated us for neither one of us having cars. Because, what if there’s an emergency? But, this is no emergency, and I’d assumed we were walking back to your place.

“I know I’m not going the wrong way.”

“Were you not listening?”

The tenseness only lasts a second. A sort of guilty bashfulness takes over my sense and, of course, because your kindness always seems to favour me as of late, you smile at me warmly and brightly, as if endeared by that dumb guilt.

“Wanna tell me what you were thinking of?”

“No way, d’you want to repeat what you were telling me?”

I eventually trace my way back to your side, and it’s only then, when we’ve lined up and you’ve taken your books back from me, you had already put your share into your backpack and now the rest was finally following, that you say anything at all.

“I asked you if you want to go out to eat tonight?”

“Like popcorn at the movie theater?”

“No, like a nice restaurant.”

I feel that bashfulness intensify then. And, damn, I don’t have a single thing to hold onto, and yes, that was definitely my hand over my collarbones. And a stupid joke coming out because I don’t know how to handle anything, not really.

“Oh my, like a date?”

“Yeah! Like a nice night out because, why not? We deserve it!”

Your smile is a bit goofy as well and I can tell your words are as stupidly picked as mine, but I shrug anyway.

“Yeah, sure. But we have to find the best restaurant. Like the one that’s most deserving of our night out.”

“Duh, I wouldn’t have it any other way!”

The restaurant we’re going to end up in will probably be way too fancy for our casual clothes, and your oversized backpack. But I think of holding your hand as we search for a place at least a dozen of times. And whenever we go to read menus, you rest your hand on my shoulder, and I have to wish you also had that urge to hold my hand instead of my dumb shoulder.

It ends up being a really good night, and when you ask me to go home with you, I almost do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!


	5. Sleep Around the Clock

This hadn’t happened in a while. I’d stayed overnight on Friday, and that had been planned, yes. Movie on Saturday, yesterday, great. Then spending an extra hour of the day with you had turned into two hours, and then four, and without much warning, I was sleeping over again.

This is not the sort of luxury I should pretend that I can afford. Because, just as the hours had run into one another yesterday, I can’t have... Two nights staying over out of the week, turning into three, and then four, until eventually it’s nothing other than full time. That’s just not going to happen.

For the moment, it’s not something I want to think about. I have to think about it though. Because the later I let myself sleep in, here on your couch, the later in the day I will be leaving, the more dangerously close I am to completely failing to resist you and to just skip another day back at my own place. I would have excuses to counter you with, of course. Like, I need to be better presented for work tomorrow. You’d lend me clothes. And that was already the end of my list of excuses.

I don’t want to think about it. I’m almost awake though, awake enough to force myself not to think about it. Definitely awake enough to hear, or maybe sense, your footsteps, and to have located them efficiently enough to know you’re staring me down. Maybe you are battling with yourself, unsure if you should wake me up or not. Maybe because you’re too empathic to pull me out of sleep. Or probably because the later you let me sleep in, the closer I will be to nightfall and to the possibility of still not yet leaving.

That can’t be though. I let my arms unfold and look up to you. There’s no way that I look good when I first wake up. And not just from the typical traces sleep leaves on others. It’s not just how my hair is trying to achieve the messiness yours somehow stylistically and constantly adopts. It has a lot more to do with the stream of sunlight hitting my retinas at full force, something that doesn’t really occur outside of my first moments of awakening. It’s brutal, and I’m sure whatever my face looks like has to be what it would look like had I just received matching black eyes.

“What time is it?”

Not to mention that voice of mine; also sounded as if I had just previously crawled out of a fight.

I probably already know the answer to my question. It must be late, much too late. It had been four and you’d proposed an additional title to the movie marathon I was slaving myself through for you, but by that point you’d finally opted to abandon my boneless state on the couch and to return to your own room. To tell the truth, for how tired I had been, it had been surprisingly hard to find sleep once you’d left me.

“It’s time for breakfast,” you answer me because you know it’s the perfect way to answer me.

Because it’s not a meal I get for myself unless I’m with you. It’s something special and something to look forward to, no matter if you’d in fact woken me up past the appropriate timeframe for it.

“I’m so happy,” I mumble, turning onto my side to once again bury my face into the insides of my elbows. I take one deep breath before convincing myself to do the right thing and to make an effort. Once I uncover myself again, and the lights don’t all seem as bright as they were previously, I finally decipher an odd sort of look crossing your face.

My face must be much more obvious though because that look is promptly wiped clean, as if you’d felt caught in the act just by the shift in my expression alone. I want to call it unfair, but I’m still not awake enough to call it anything at all.

“What… Uhm…” Further words don’t come to mind. I want to ask about what’s on your mind, what it is that you had been thinking of me in that moment, what exactly was that clear concentration on your face and what purpose it might have served. The only word I manage to articulate however is the beautiful syllable of ‘what’ and though it successfully conveys my feelings it is more than easy for you to dismiss such a small word.

It should be easy for me to dismiss such a small moment of such a fleeting expression as well, and so I push down the sentiment that told me that I absolutely needed to unlock the meaning behind that ephemeral occurrence. I let the sensation of importance flicker away as well.

“I’ll slice you an apple. Granny Smith sounds good to you?”

Whatever look had been on your face hadn’t mattered. Having a lovely breakfast together is what matters. You don’t need to say it, I get it, even though the world is only just starting to truly dim down and to give me the space and the air needed for me to inhale. I hum in contemplation as my hands pat around in hopes of retrieving my shades.

They’d probably slipped in between the couch’s cushions. If I had to describe the way I handled them it would be that I cared for them extremely so, but in a careless manner. In the way that I never even thought of taking them off, but that often resulted in them tumbling into more or less dangerous places whenever I fell unconscious.

Just as my fingers touch an unbroken arm of the shades, thankfully, I make up my mind.

“Nah, let me go brush my teeth first? I feel gross.”

There’s no time for your face to fall. You counter before letting any emotion slip in.

“I know what you’re playing at, Dave. You won’t want to eat directly after having toothpaste in your mouth, and by the time that you do, you’ll tell me it’s too late to be brunching and you’ll go home.”

The only hint of emotion had been on the last word. I’m not stupid enough to fail to recognise that you usually avoid calling my apartment my home. Likewise, I try to avoid referring to it mentally as such as well. I typically convince myself that I do that in respects to you, to abide to your wishes. That might not be true though. It probably isn’t.

“So? Believe it or not, I actually know how to slice apples myself, I can have one later tonight.”

You groan, run your stupidly gorgeous hand through your hair. The motion has your sleep shirt lifting and my eyes have trouble deciding whether they want to settle on the shape of your hipbones or the shape of your fingers.

“Stop being a baby. Do you want peanut butter on your apple slices? Nutella?”

I only answer once I’ve pushed my shades back into place, with a hesitant but obviously relenting, “Honey maybe?”

You smile the sort of smile that tells me exactly what you’re thinking, and not for the first time, I think of the one time a few months ago when you had confessed to me that you liked that I always picked sweet over savoury. You’d said that it suited my personality. And I’d done my best impersonation of someone deeply offended, but I still often think of how you believe me to be sweet. I always do a poor job at keeping myself from interiorly gushing at the small compliment.

I follow you into the kitchen, yawning into the crook of my elbow once before climbing up onto the kitchen island with a pathetic lack of energy, totally forgoing the stools as you often ask me not to do. Though I know that you don’t actually mind.

“I could make it caramel instead? Or marshmallow fluff?” You offer as you peel the green apple. I smile because both those choices had been sweet too, you don’t notice it though, and I don’t let it seep into my tone of voice.

“Honey’s good.”

“Shit, I wish I had apple jam. How awesome would that be?”

“Killer awesome.” I have to cover my mouth halfway through the reply to hide away another yawn, but you seem distracted, content. I’m trying not to glare too intensely at the oven’s digital clock. I try not to think about overstaying my stay. I try not to let the numbers flood out every other thought, but my attempt is quite small and quite futile.

It’s not long before you’re putting the plate down next to me, though I try to ignore the exact number of seconds. The slices sit in one of the flower shaped plastic plates you keep in your cupboard, your household already had those the very first time I had gone to Washington. The plate is yellow and I smile down at it. You’re being obvious, but maybe not to yourself. I wonder if, perhaps, the attention your gestures suggest is entirely subconscious.

I don’t start eating right away, watching you fix up a snack for yourself. It’s one of your gross concoctions, some of the components are even unidentifiable. Something like yogurt with ice cream, muesli, sliced bananas, and sliced strawberries. It doesn’t look very appetising, but it’s one of those things you tend to make for yourself in between meals.

“Have you eaten anything today yet?” I ask you dutifully once you finish mixing the substance.

“Yeah, no. I half starved to death waiting for your skinny ass to rise and shine, it was agony.” You climb onto one of the stools, and your elbow brushes against my knee as you pick up your spoon, you don’t comment on my perched seat. “I had a big boy’s breakfast, don’t you worry. With toast and eggs and the whole kit.”

“So impressive.” You smile around your first mouthful and I at least give you a smirk as I pick up the first slice.

I eat the apple too quickly. I’m left with the too sweet aftertaste, balanced out with the bitter guilt of not having thought things through. Should’ve taken my time, I repeat to myself mentally, observing the grip you have on your spoon as you blissfully continue your own food; you’d done the model, reasonable thing, you had taken your time.

“How do you even function on so little sleep?” I muse out loud.

You were always the reasonable one, weren’t you? But you were the one who kept me up as long as possible. The contradiction in those small details was almost too insignificant, but it was suddenly, though not for the first time, attracting my full attention.

I don’t realise I’ve moved my hand into your dark hair until your eyes move upwards and lock with mine. Your stare is aware and daring, whereas mine is probably weak and wandering. I haven’t been awake long enough. You seem constantly awake though.

Your answer is not quite as mastered as your gaze though, and the unfinished sentence that leaves your lips is a simple: “How do you—”

The rest never comes. Your lips touch one another again as you shut your mouth, but your expression is unshifted, sure of yourself despite the inability to complete the question.

“How do I do?” I ruffle your hair hastily, in the sort of motion that could validate me pulling my hand away, but my teasing doesn’t seem to shake you either.

“It’s nothing,” you answer me, as if retracting your words was no big deal at all and not a sign of anything hidden. You move your free hand in the air in the most dismissive gesture your hand movement repertoire has, and that should have been that.

I bring the yellow flower plate over my lap, fingers sliding over the outline. There wasn’t a drip of honey on the plate. You were good at not making messes. Surely if I had brushed my teeth earlier and had had an apple at my apartment instead, I would have needed to wash the counters thoroughly.

You were good at not making messes. You were good at saying too much, yet not enough, and not looking guilty about it whatsoever. And I simply wasn’t those things.

I put the plate back down onto the table’s surface before hopping off and using the stool next to yours instead. You smile, the way you duck your head doesn’t hide that, but I’m at least able to hide my own smile. At least I can have that.

“John.” You lose the smile. “How do I what?”

“Did you want another apple?”

“You know that I don’t.”

“I’ve got plenty.”

“John.”

Your eyes lose the smile too then. You glance over at me in the sort of way that has me wondering if you hate it when I use your first name. It’s not the first time that I’ve wondered about it though. My attention moves back to the plate. Maybe I shouldn’t have called you out like that. But there was something. There was something in the way that you looked at me, exactly as you had when you had woken me up, and that something wasn’t something that I could follow.

“Is something wrong?” Unplanned words, and yet they still don’t seem to faze you.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that you’re looking at me kind of weird, dude.”

My words are followed by a somewhat heavy silence and it is only then that I come to acknowledge the destabilising honesty and forwardness I did not often use play out through my approach.

“Am I?”

You choke out a laugh that is just as off as the way you look at me. I’m not foolish enough to fail to notice that you are supplying questions instead of answers.

“Well, whatever.” I don’t have time to sigh; now that I’m seated in the proper place I’ve lost sight of the oven’s clock, but the numbers are still there, ticking away quietly. I should leave. Maybe that’s what you were trying to communicate too. “Is it because I stayed too long? I know that I did, you… You don’t have to get all weird on me.”

The numbers are accumulating underneath my skin, but once again my words have rung out before those numbers and that logic could reach my consciousness. Of course you weren’t trying to communicate how much you wanted me to leave. You were constantly communicating how much you wanted me to stay. I knew that. Well, I was supposed to know that.

And that’s exactly what your face read as your expression turned into something I was more familiar with.

“What? Of course not! It’s nothing, I told you. I’m just wondering about stuff.”

“Try not to wonder so scarily,” I mumble.

This is stupid, and I feel stupid, and I really should be heading home. You haven’t finished your food though. Not that it matters, you’ve put your spoon down and you’ve turned towards me. I’m not about to turn though.

I don’t ask you anything else, but this time you do answer.

“I was just wondering about the way you sleep…” I shoot you a look, but I notice then that even though you’d angled yourself towards me, you weren’t staring at me at all, eyes lost almost. “It’s just that… Sometimes you do this thing when you sleep. But today, every single time I went to check on you, you were doing it, and I, just…”

You finish in a sigh, and it’s almost reassuring to watch your uncertainty. I turn towards you, arms hanging limply as to avoid crossing them. It’s the best I can summon when it comes to adopting welcoming body language.

“Well? What’s the thing?”

“Well, you—” You laugh a bit tensely, but your eyes finally meet mine and things don’t seem all that bad. “You cover your face, like this.” You don’t have to mimic it for me to understand right away, but you still do, crossing both your arms over your face, as you had found me this morning.

“Oh, yeah…”

I laugh too, exactly in the same way as you had.

“It’s just that,” you take a deep breath. You look uncomfortable, for once. “I figured you must have been hiding your face from the light? So I’ve always made sure to have all the lights off wherever and whenever you sleep over, but it doesn’t seem to help at all.”

“Is it a problem?”

You cut me off in a much more convinced tone of voice and I force myself not to avoid your eyes whatsoever, to maintain that small contact for the time being.

“No, of course not. I’m sorry. I just got distracted, I guess.” Another deep breath that I almost take at the same time as you do. “I just like your arms? Like, the way that they bend, for some reason.”

I smile, you break our eye contact first.

I glance furtively at your hands and the way your fingers are twisting the drawstrings of your pyjama pants. I think I understand.

“I wish I knew what to tell you. I guess you might have been onto something. I just know that when I’m really, really, really tired, I actually take the time to take off my shades before bed and, that’s how I fall asleep. Probably to make sure no light will wake me up?”

That hadn't been the case yesterday. Your stare changes again, to the way it was when I had woken up. It was off because you weren’t looking me in the eye, I realise, you were looking down at my arms, maybe my elbows.

What you want to say is that I’ve been doing it more often, I can tell. What you want to ask me is if I’m feeling excessively tired. But I’m really not.

“I’m not that tired, or anything. It’s just comforting sometimes, I think. Like wrapping your arms around yourself when there’s no one else around to hug you?” Like holding yourself in your sleep when you don’t have someone there to hold you instead.

You don't point that out though, and this time it’s easy for me to tell where your eyes are going. I try to observe your face, to understand if that look on it is the same I get when you catch me looking at your hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who is reading, I hope that you are enjoying it!


	6. With Bated Breath

“Kid, breathe. When you hold your breath you’re sending the message to your body that you’re about to die.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned breathing. But that had been the sole time my brother had put it that way. He hadn’t elaborated. He hadn’t spoken of blood levels or of carbon dioxide. There had always been a fine line between poetry and science to me, and I had never been able to tell which side of the line he had been on.

It was in the middle of our sparring though, and so it could have been argued that he had used the phrase as a tactic to win, to distract me as my mind reeled to find the apt meaning and the apt application to the sentence.   
Impossible though, he barely needed any tactics to beat me. His only tactics had always been in aims to educate me and to teach me. But he had never gone back on that sentence.

The week following that moment though, I had gone back on that sentence over and over again by myself, until I was assured that every night before I passed out, the words on my mind were: If you hold your breath, you are telling your body that you are about to die.

He had only meant that I could only reach my full potential if I was breathing with my movement, if I wasn’t holding my breath. But it felt like valuable knowledge, knowledge I could put to good use in the future, even were it only under a psychological method.

With that piece of information, other sayings he often used around me started to make more sense.

He would often say; “Don’t forget to exhale. Your body will naturally inhale, but you have to remember to breathe out.” I of course quickly found it true that if I ever forgot to breathe, it wasn’t on empty lungs, but with a puffed out chest. It felt odd though, now that I associated the idea of those full lungs with imminent termination. If I struggled, my body would act as if I were in danger to improve my performance. I felt extremely lazy in comparison, even though my brother’s constant teachings had proved that it in fact did not improve performance. Breathing fully and normally was key. Approach things casually to maximize productivity.

No matter how much I focused on the simple solution though, on that aspect of breathing and on fully absorbing my training; not much seemed to ever change. Improvement was more of a punchline than it was anything else. I couldn’t understand back then why it was that my brother always seemed so much further ahead, so much more capable when I was adopting his identical lifestyle.

I suppose at first I would have described myself as an exemplary healthy kid, I had thought that I had deserved to be just as strong as my brother, whatever that had even meant. After I’d spent hours trying to find answers online, trying to find out why it was that I couldn’t unlock the strength others had, I understood that I was maybe just physically active, and not exactly a postcard of health. I’d read that eighty percent of your physique was determined by diet.

For the first time in my life the way my brother spoiled me with different treats and dishes and sweets and personal favourites, felt like a burden. If I’m being completely honest, that one sentence had haunted me for quite some time after.

Not as long as that sentence about holding your breath had haunted me however. As it still haunted me today.

Sometimes it’s when the rain hits the windowpanes too hard. Other times it’s when my vision goes a bit funny and I have to sit back down. Or even the times when sleep won’t come after hours of stillness. Most of the time I purposefully hold my breath when you get that one look in your eyes.

The raindrops would drum on the windows too harshly and I would find myself thinking of running away. Thinking of doing things completely differently. Thinking of throwing away the hard work I had put forth in favour of relaxing. When it rained I felt the pull to do things differently; as I’m sure many others felt as well. On mornings when it rains I’ll hold my breath as I fill my water bottle over the kitchen sink before heading out for work. I’ll hold my breath as I think of things I could let up on for the day, to give those urges a negative connotation as to avoid them completely.

My vision would shake sometimes, in the middle of the day. Just enough for only myself to be able to notice it, just enough for me to have to find something to grip onto as to fight back the black spots. I’ll hold my breath then. My eyes tend to go watery then too, but it’s not too challenging to hide that either. I hold my breath long enough to have more tears gather, and just that bit longer to convince myself not to let them slide away. I hold my breath when I feel faint to remind myself that I’m not about to die.

And I hold my breath in the middle of the night. When the sheets are still cool even though they’ve stayed wrapped around my body for hours. With all the lights turned on and all the curtains drawn shut, I hold my breath for even longer than I would when the rain hits too hard or when nausea hits me too hard instead. I hold my breath at night sometimes when there’s no one home but me and that notion is suddenly very real and very acute, and I don’t feel as safe all by myself as I should. I hold my breath when I long for companionship in the middle of the night because there’s not much else I can do about it. And it’s the safest method I’ve found to convince myself that I’m not quite as scary as my mind wants me to believe.

I’m holding my breath now. It’s a triple threat sort of situation. The sidewalks are completely flooded. The rain still hasn’t ceased and the strong rebound of raindrops off the multitude of umbrellas out and about were telling enough of their force of impact. My legs were starting to strain as my vision did. Not that I hadn’t eaten today. One of my coworkers had brought in a bag of dried apple wedges. They’d looked like marshmallows, but when I had asked and had understood what they were I’d wound up with a handful in no time.

I should ask you if you’ve ever seen any of those at the grocery store before.

I probably won’t. Because you’ve had that look in your eyes for the past quarter of an hour, ever since you’d picked me up. Voila, that was the third reason for my halted breathing.

“You didn’t have to pick me up, you know? Especially not without a raincoat.”

You own at least two raincoats too. One of them being one of those stereotypically yellow ones. I know you do because whenever we have to go out in the rain I borrow that one from you, and you wear your probably more acceptable and less affordable green jacket. But you’d showed up at my workplace, unannounced, in short sleeves.

Not that I am in any position to judge, not with my already drenched hoodie clinging to my surely already dampened skin.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. This is fun! We can run from the bus to my place after instead.”

Instead of taking so long to get to the bus stop like we’d just managed. You’d said we should aim to stay dry and find tortuous ways to stick to paths under small rooftops and imposing trees. You’d said it as if you wanted to make it a game, surely enough you’d laughed a lot, and I’d laughed for a moment or two as well. It had taken much longer than usual though to get to the stop that was located just a couple of minutes away from the office, and we definitely had not managed to stay dry. Your hair had already been darker than black with the absorbed rain when you’d picked me up anyway. It wasn’t much of a surprise.

But now we need to wait another quarter of an hour or so for the bus. No one else is waiting and so the shelter is all ours. But the rain is hitting hard overhead, and even when sitting down things seem a bit more illuminated than usual. And the looks you’ve been sending me are definitely noticeable.

“Is something the matter?”

I’m hoping that the way I’m asking you will make your stare change. I’m hoping I’ll be able to breathe normally again. Instead you slide closer towards me on the metallic bench of the shelter. I reposition my hand onto my lap so that it won’t come in contact with yours.

“I just like the rain. I’ve been studying inside all day, so why not? Besides, it’s always nice to try to surprise you.” You use the word ‘try’ but your eyebrows lift in a clear statement that you do believe you are the master at getting a shocked reaction out of me. Getting any emotion out of me really, if you aren’t selling yourself short.

“I don’t like the rain,” I answer blandly, fixing my gaze ahead and through the glass panel, checking the corner of the street for the bus’ arrival.

“I can tell that you like the rain, Dave.” The tone of your voice makes it sound like you’re telling me a secret that’s alluded me, but I don’t turn back towards you, and I still exhale as little as possible.

“But I don’t.”

I probably do. What I dislike, probably, is my fondness for it.

What I dislike is the confidence that rushes through me when the rain hits. I can’t get overly confident. If I hold my breath, if I associate that confidence to fatality maybe I can chase it away.   
No matter how much I hold my breath though, you still look like you might…

“You shouldn’t have picked me up. We’ll eat too late. It’s not good to eat so late.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Maybe just a little.”

“That’s great!”

In my peripheral vision I can see you clapping your hands together and I puff out my chest a bit more. If I start looking at your hands then there’ll definitely be no turning away.

Then I’ll catch sight of that stupidly abundant love you have for me and then I'll also take clear notice of how on days like today you do nothing to hide it. Maybe it’s confidence? Maybe you feel confident in your feelings, or maybe it’s just me feeling just a little more confident and more convinced that someone might look at me the way that you are looking at me.

I wish you hadn’t picked me up. We’re going to run back home in the pouring rain once we step out of the bus. Well, run back to your place. Maybe you’ll kiss me on the front porch of the apartment building. You’re going to kiss me because you look like you want to kiss me. And I want to kiss you. But I definitely do not want this to happen. Maybe if I hold my breath long enough the look on your face might pass. Maybe the rain will stop on the way back home and we can go back to not thinking about these sorts of things. Well, on the way back to your place.

My breath more than hitches; you put your hands over my shoulders and I am completely shaken out of it. Or, completely unshaken out of it really, frozen with an insisting fear that you might just lean in and do something that is almost unspeakable to the both of us.

I know you wouldn’t though. Not like this, not now.

“We should make sundaes tonight,” you tell me, all smiles and an air to you that just won’t go away.

“It’s not Sunday. It’s not right.”

“Shut up, sundae Sundays aren’t even a thing for anyone that’s even a smidgen cool.”

You pull back and I definitely do not stare at the way your fingers draw back as you settle back into your seat coolly, arms crossed, smirking as if I had already given you permission to go ahead with the midweek sundae idea.

“Ok, whatever, granted. But no one in their right mind uses the word smidgen.” Normal banter. Everything is fine. No need to hold my breath so frantically.

“I’ll cover yours in an entire shaker of sprinkles, don’t worry. You’ll love it.”

Your grin’s definitely still there, even cocky now I’d say. And my reply almost comes out as, ‘I love you’ but I safely keep my mouth shut instead.

The silence doesn’t last. It barely has any time to form. The rain is too loud, my breathing is too loud. The silence never comes and you see no problem in continuing the chatter.

“How was your day anyway?” You ask me.

“Good.” Not really so good, to be honest. An entire day of trying to convince my body that I am about to die, that I am almost there. It is clearly not yet convinced.

“Wanna spend the night?”

I shake my head no, but I don’t even think of outright saying it.

“You could call in sick and we could spend the day together tomorrow?”

“What? No, of course not.”

The words are an impulse. Glancing your way is one too. Thankfully, the look has now somewhat subsided. Not so thankfully, your request to spend a full day together tomorrow as well as your surprise visit to pick me up forcefully combine in my mind. Maybe something was wrong? You wanted to spend time together.

Of course you did, I didn’t need you to state it clearly… I do though. I’m waiting for you to put it clearly, black on white. I’m always waiting for you to put things down in an obvious manner. That’s just not who you are though. I miss seeing the bus turn the corner because my eyes are fixated on the way you’re cracking your knuckles. This time, you do stop the chatter.

The floor of the bus is just as wet as the streets. It fills me with the same sentiment as the constant drumming on the windowpanes. We take a seat near the back. You are as pressed up as you can be against me, though the bus is and stays relatively empty. You look out the window, not the one directly next to you, but the one across from us. I look at the way you are playing with your fingers instead and imagine what it must be like to have you playing with my fingers instead. It’s a stupid thought. I still entertain it for most of the ride.

By the time our stop comes up, you’ve cheered right back up to normal. You must be telling yourself that you have to reel the energy back up if you’re only with me for a few hours instead of your requested full day. I’m thinking I might surprise you and actually do as you told me to. Spend the night, call in sick in the morning. I’m not saying a thing for now, I still want the option to back up. Especially if the atmosphere doesn’t change. Especially if the skies keep raining, and if you keep watching me in that way.

Maybe things will change after I’ve eaten and I can tell you then. Maybe you’ll be really happy. Maybe you’ll kiss me. Except that’s not a thing that’s wanted here and if you do, I surely will have to back out of staying over.   
You jump out of the bus with your two feet together and land straight into a puddle, and laugh about it the whole way back home. Your home that is. You start running too, just as I had predicted. It’s not usually hard for me to keep up with your pace. But I’m busy trying to hold in my breath and trying not to notice every little thing about you all at once. It’s nearly impossible.

By the time we make it inside into your building’s lobby, I’ve decided that maybe your summer wardrobe was smarter than my long sleeves and jeans. My clothes feel heavy, as if an entire ocean of raindrops was submerging me via my clothes.

You’re still laughing though. Harder than before, as if my appearance was shockingly funny. It probably is.

I breathe out fully. At least we hadn’t kissed on the front porch. Which, I can see it logically now, could never have happened. Not when you’re laughing at me the way that you are now. Maybe those looks are just miscalculation, my lack of correct judgment.

The one level up is more challenging than usual too. I can see my whitened knuckles as I grip the railing on the way up. It reminds me of the way you had cracked yours earlier. I suddenly feel a little uncomfortable.

“I’m going to change into pyjamas. You can have some of my clothes. And if you don’t want them, then tough luck you’re staying on the welcome mat because you look like a pond monster and I don’t want you dripping all over the place.”

You’re calling the words out at me from over your shoulder, heading straight into your bedroom without a look my way. It’s a comfort, but at the same that too is just a bit uncomfortable.

It doesn’t take you long to come back, which is purely a relief. I’d managed to peel my soaked through sneakers off, but had resorted to wrapping my arms around myself and the abominably heavy hoodie.

You do come back in your pyjamas, and with a pile of clothes in your arms, but I quickly shake my head as you approach me. Even as you start babbling about me having to change right there in your doorway to avoid wrecking the entire place.

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t mind. Could I just maybe get some pyjamas too instead?”

Your face morphs completely. The clothes are dropped and you skitter away hastily, wordlessly. I grit my teeth in a way that will keep them from chattering. I don’t have much time to wonder if the clothes drop was a hint that you were fed up and you just wanted me to change into that instead. You come back in no time with a towel and pyjamas that almost match yours and I can almost smile at you.

“You decided to stay then?”

You waste no time ruffling my wet hair with the towel, leaning too close in and smiling too fondly. I really hope you won’t kiss me.

“Yeah…”

The pyjamas are dropped too, at my feet, and your fingers agilely pull the zipper of my hoodie down. Once that’s off, I can’t find my way into breathing again.

“I can change my clothes myself, Egbert.”

Your hands move back faster than I’ve ever seen before.

“Sorry! Shit, I just… Your lips are like blue, I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

I hold my breath. It feels as if I’m about to die. My eyes are still downcast as I nod in agreement. I only start changing once you’ve turned away in embarrassment.

You don’t know much more embarrassed than you I had felt. But later, when things have settled down and we’re preparing dinner side by side in the stupidly matching sleepwear, you wrap your arm around my waist and kiss my cheek and I don’t even really have to hold my breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, updates are slower than I would like them to be. I have a friend visiting from overseas but soon I will have more time for myself again and I should hopefully fix the update speed!


	7. Cold Feet

Somewhere along the line I became cold. Not quite in the sense of being detached, or so I hope. Simply cold, constantly in need of more warmth.

I think the first time I truly noticed it was whilst a spring break back home in Texas. I’d ridden in the front of the car and had blasted the heater as far up as it could go. We’d gone out, my brother and I, grocery shopping, but once arrived I had opted to stay inside. I hadn’t been able to face the chill of the outside world. I’d stayed inside the car, and had made sure to keep the heating turned all the way up. He hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t thought much of it.

My life had entered an era of sweater layering and frequent bath and shower taking a day to maintain body temperature. I’d bought a heater I had plugged into the wall for my bedroom and often curled up next to it when completing school work. Even so, with a constant and precise attention to keeping body heat, my skin was and is often raised with goosebumps. There’s often not much keeping me from slipping my arms into opposite sleeves and wrapping my fingers around my upper arms in a stupid attempt to contain the evidence of my constant chill.

Somewhere along the line I became cold, and I haven’t yet come out of that. Not quite in the sense of being detached but on some days I have to wonder if it might be related. Maybe I’d lost my way and my compassion and my body had in return rejected the idea of comfort and of warmth. I really don’t know. But I keep an extra sweater at the office, in my backpack whenever I need to go out, by my bed in case I wake up. I’ll curl up in a bathtub filled with hot water every morning, and take an extra long hot shower every night, ready to wrap myself in possibly the fluffiest towel I’ve owned so far in life.  
I don’t speak of it. It’s not a thing for me. It’s not my label, I’m not that guy who is always chilly. You might know though. Every winter since that spring, not that that amounts to that many seasons yet but it’s still a pattern that’s emerged, you get me different articles of clothing. Often mittens, or scarves, or hats. You don’t make a big deal out of it either. You always just so happen to have an extra pair or have a scarf you no longer like, things like that.

You never say anything about me using those things up until the first day of summer. It’s not my thing, and you don’t make it my thing.

This year, you’ve made me convertible fingerless mittens. It’s those fingerless gloves that have a flap that transforms the whole into a mitten. They’re my favourite. You didn’t make it my thing, you’d just been proving Rose wrong about your knitting skills, you’d told me, and so you had those just laying around.

Neither one of us had mentioned how I always sighed and fidgeted when I had to remove my gloves or mittens to make a text or anything of the sort. I wouldn’t dare to imply that you had perhaps picked the project with me on your mind.

There’s no more snow coating the ground, it’s not really that cold out, I don’t think so. When I’d gotten down on my knees and had slid down to lay on my stomach the strands of grass had felt warmed by the sun.

Even so, beneath two sets of sleeves, my arms were still covered in goosebumps, and I hadn’t yet thought of removing the gloves you’d knitted me, not even once. My fingers were still busy with the camera however and those mittens were the perfect apparel to allow me to move my uninterrupted fingertips to adjust the lens from time to time.

Your sleeves were short. You had forgone the jacket weeks ago. You were sitting too, not pressed up to the grass as I was. From time to time I’d feel your fingers brush through my hair. Maybe it bothered you whenever you spotted knots in it. It also bothers me when my hair is knotted, so I definitely know that it isn’t. I don’t say anything though. And you haven’t said anything about my obvious teeth chattering.

“What if it doesn’t come back?”

You don’t sound as impatient as you do sound bored. I had told you that you could head home if you felt like it over an hour ago though.

“I’ve got the nest perfectly in frame. So, like every other time you’ve asked, she’s still going to come back, yes.”

“Can’t you get the babies into frame and then we can go back home? Still counts, right?”

I don’t bother trying to figure out which apartment home was supposed to refer to.

“Look, no. That’s not what I came here to do. Either you stop insisting I leave, or you leave, got it?”

My fingers twitch over the shutter release. I wanted to take these gloves off and to throw them at your face. Mostly, I wanted to feel differently than I did. I don’t want to get annoyed. I want you to stick around, and you know so. You know so, because even as I had told you that you could just up and go, an hour or so ago, I’d said it in a way that would absolutely let you know that I wanted you around. I don’t really know how to describe this tone. And, yes, I wanted to speak differently too, I didn’t want to let these things show.

You flop down onto your back, a blade of grass in between your fingers. In my peripheral vision I can see you tearing it into increasingly smaller pieces.

I know what it is. You aren’t actually fed up with our motionless. Your complaints are just your approach to filling this silence. You don’t know that it makes me nervous.

I don’t want to feel nervous. No, I really don’t.

You’d told me, a few months ago, on one of those nights where it had felt as if there was nothing but water in my lungs; that I should start considering giving more of my time to the things that I love. And so I had taken back up a lot of hobbies of my past that were just a bit more inclined towards creation and not so much destruction than what my seemingly drowned out lungs called for me to do. Weekdays left me too drained and too defeated. But Saturdays and Sundays were different. Progressively I filled them with bird watching, photography, sewing, music, swimming, running. Not much at all, it felt like once I was back into the motions of Mondays, but everything when Friday nights would draw the sun back in again.

You probably weren’t expecting me to ask you to babysit me through all of these things. I needed you with me, and though I would never grab your hand, your presence was supposed to fill in that role of hand holding all on itself.

You never turned me down. Still, your mind drifted a lot and a large portion of myself did constantly feel a distinct and aching nervousness that my self indulgence would one day push you off the edge and away from me.

You’ve gone back to my hair, but this time it’s more awkward head patting than it is much else. You’re not even looking my way, staring up at the sky now, the cut up blade of grass strewn across your chest in pieces, and your arm reaching blindly towards me to pet my hair back into place. It’s probably just your cue to let me know that I should calm down.

“You’re not bored out of your mind, right?”

So much for keeping that nervousness to myself. My voice has gone almost quieter than the rustle of the leaves overhead. You probably understand though, you understand what it means to step up to my feelings and to let you in on them. It’s not ever going to be easy, it’s not ever going to be enjoyable, it’s not ever going to be something I don’t need you to be holding my hand through. Even if strictly in spirit.

You make a small sound as if you have to think about it, teasingly. Then answer, cleanly cut, as if set on eradicating the quickly hatching fears in my mind: “Nope. Just like to remind you from time to time that I’m here.”

Because your mind likes to drift, but you do like spending time with me. Because you’d sit at the foot of my bed all weekend long if I was unable to uncover my face from my pillows, which has happened before and you'd proven it then already. You had nowhere else you wanted to be and even if I didn’t quite love that idea and still couldn’t convince myself of it after all of these years; you’ve still made it clear.

I’ve set my camera down on the ground, brought my elbows back in towards myself in an attempt to conserve a tad more of body heat. I’ve given you my attention now, my focus no longer even directed upwards but rather ahead. I’m not sure you’ll notice, your focus is still up after all. I need to concentrate though, and I need to put more willpower into wishing these goosebumps away.

“I know you’re here, always, even from thousands of miles away.” I had to concentrate to form those words. It’s not that they’re too generous. It’s that they’re too disarming, and reconciling those two ends of the spectrum still isn’t something I’ve given enough thought to.

“Corny, much?”

But you aren’t trying to shrug me off, you flip onto your stomach, moving closer to me in doing so, and your eyes find the line of vision towards the nest once you’ve noticed that I’ve given up on it. You don’t want me to miss the moment, I can tell. My interest’s moved on to a different sort of moment however, I keep looking forward.

“Was still completely true for years.”

Maybe not the best thing to say. I hang my head. You put your hands under your chin, and I like to think that maybe it was to keep yourself from doing the same as me. Maybe your body and being had the same inclinations as mine. It’s probably too good to be true however.

There was nothing bad about my upbringing. There was nothing bad about yours. And there had never been anything bad about our friendship. It hurt a lot to think about living so far apart. Even if it had not hurt to that extent in that past. Maybe, if we ever end up living together, we will feel that way about the times we had to live in the same city, but in different residences. And then, maybe, that will be more than enough for us to stay with one another.

By the time you speak up again, my thoughts have degenerated into something else. Into something that focuses on the feeling of drowning, or the feeling of the floor dropping beneath my feet. Your voice is, perfectly so, matching the quietness I had adopted as well not so long ago. Barely enough to match the rustle of leaves.

The wind has lifted in the last moment and your words are difficult to catch. Difficult to convince myself I had heard right as well.

You ask me. “Does it sometimes feel as if I’m farther away from you than I used to be?”

“You’re about two inches away, John.”

I hear you swallow. Maybe a nasty comment, maybe a defeated sigh, maybe something that will put me back into my place. I know I should have answered seriously. I know you know that I should have. It’s a rare occasion to find out more about what you’re truly thinking, about what’s really going on with you.

It’s a frightening occasion and I push it back.

“We went from two ends of the country to same bus line, what do you even mean?”

I really don’t need to know what you mean. I move the flaps of the mittens back over my hands. It’s too cold and you are indeed too far, but those are not words you will get from me.

“I don’t know.”

Your fingers gravitate towards your own hair this time. I consider that it may be time for me to go back to the bird watching. I even pick the camera back up, but I have to struggle with the desire to fidget and to sigh now that my fingers are hidden away. I put it back down. I should put it back into its case, really. I can’t be bothered. I’m afraid that if I shift slightly away from you my body will icily realize just how cold it is out here.

I wasn’t expecting you to elaborate, but when you do, I put the side of my head down next to the camera, my eyes now zoomed in on you. Putting my ear against the ground is probably as vulnerable as this position can get, but I think at the rate at which you’re putting your own walls down, you may not notice that it would be an easy chance to strike me down.

“Ok, like… Let’s say you don’t have something, so it doesn’t really feel like it’s not enough because it’s just not a thing for you. But then, when you get a little bit of that thing, it feels like you need all of it and until then it just won’t be enough. And you’re left feeling like it’s not enough, even though you didn’t when you had even less.”

A single breath. A single breath filled with too many words. I’m expecting your words to come out as slivers of fog with how cold I’m feeling. Only, it’s not cold, your bare arms are bent to allow you to rest your chin down onto your hands, and there are no traces of blue or of raised hairs. It’s not cold, but I am.

“So what, you saying that you didn’t want us to live closer in the start?”

My smirk isn’t confident enough to pull off a topic switch. You still haven’t turned to look at me, you must still be checking the nest.

“I’m saying, I didn’t think I was going to want to see you all the time. Always.”

Your words are almost laced with pain. As if this want was physically hurting you. I can feel the pain in the very center of my chest too, almost enough to distract from the iciness I can imagine lodged into the left side of my chest.

I still try to wave it off.

“Expecting me to be annoying, huh?”

“No. I loved you. I just didn’t think I’d love you this much in the end. I didn’t think you’d feel far away just sitting next to me.”

Your eyes find mine and I’m done for. I can’t counter, I can’t flinch, I can’t stand up and leave. I can only hold your gaze and convince myself to keep any words I might think up to myself.

“I know you feel it too.”

“I don’t. You’re two inches away. Hell, you show up even when I don’t ask you to.”

“Why are you lying?”

The situation is too serious. You’re being too forward. It’s just too cold for this sort of stuff. I turn my head to lay my right ear onto the ground instead and put my hands over my head. It might be too much, but it’s clear. I’m taking cover from this, it is not something I wish to discuss.

Pushiness isn’t part of your trademark or anything, so I am quite surprised when your next words aren’t aimed towards redirecting us. In fact, they do much the opposite of it, completely cornering me into whatever confrontation you’d had the sudden urge for.

“I always see you staring at my hands, you know? I’ve noticed.”

I shake my head. There is no other way to answer. It had been something I had never wanted to be revealed. It is not something I care to share, it is not something I wish to discuss. For once, this is not ours, it is mine.

But you don’t know that. You don’t know that and you step right in.

“I know you want to hold my hand. I’m not close enough, I know.”

I shake my head, but it’s too late. Your fingers have wrapped around my right hand. The right glove of the set you’d knitted for me is my saviour. It’s not flesh to flesh, but you still pull my hand away from my head and keep it in yours, securely, intimately; much too personally than I had been prepared for.

“I didn’t say that,” I finally tell you, and I unravel from my frozen state, turning onto my side towards you, feeling quite pulled apart. My hair’s definitely messy now, and if this connection of hands wasn’t something you’d just established, you’d be reaching for my hair for a different contact. I know you too, we can both make these statements, I know.

“Tell me if I’m wrong. Just tell me if I’m wrong, because you’re not going to come tell me what you want.”

I shut my eyes.

“Just let me get closer to you.”

I nod because somehow your words are making it to me. I’m not making the final efforts to close myself off, I nod dumbly just to give you a sign. A sign that, I’m here as well. And back then, you should have known I was with you, even those thousands of miles away. There isn’t anything corny about it. Not to me. This is part of what’s important.

“I have no idea why it’s so difficult.”

When I speak, it’s less than the rustle of the leaves, and it won’t be caught by your ears. But your eyes have settled onto my lips. Part of me is afraid you will kiss me, the better part of me knows it was only to identify my words. I clutch at your hand anyway because this is the very first time that I’ve allowed myself to do this. Or perhaps, the first time I’ve allowed you to allow me.

“We’ll figure it out,” is all that you tell me. You, in contrast, use steady and loud words.

We spend too much time sneaking shy smiles at one another and squeezing each other’s hands. I forget to try to indulge myself in things I love to avoid drowning from the inside. But I take a picture of you in the bus and you count the birds you spot on the way back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so so so so sorry for slow updates!!! Thank you to everyone who is still reading regardless of my slow delivery, my gosh. I'll only promise once more to make hastier updates, haha.  
> That said, I should let everyone know that this will have A LOT of chapters, I just haven't pinpointed a number yet! :)
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed the latest chapter!


	8. Crying Over Spilled Milk

I wasn’t having a bad day, nor was I having a good day. There hadn’t really been any qualifiers.

Maybe, it had started out as an odd day. One of those days when you aren’t quite sure if you still belong to your body. You reach your hand forward and there is no way to tell if it is still your hand or not.

You had the day off and so did I. But we hadn’t made any plans to meet yet. Of course, it was debatable if we even had to make plans nowadays to know that we had to reserve the day for the other. I had thought that going out by myself wouldn’t be going against that concept though; it wasn’t even yet ten in the morning.

In the end, I hadn’t done much while out by myself. I’d taken the subway. Which I've always loved, but there’s never really any credible reasons for me to take it. And I’d stopped in a station connecting to one of the more imposing shopping centres.

I don’t care to know why I find window shopping stabilizing. It hadn’t been a big deal anyway, only an hour or so of picking favourites out of selections in the fronts of stores. And a good ten minute spent in a boutique I’d found that specialized in candy apples. I wanted to go back there one day with you by my side and get one to share.

But by myself, I bought absolutely nothing. I felt better though, alone, and away from the place where I slept. There were millions of theories in my mind that could successfully explain why the activity eased my soul, but that was enough for me.

I knew that there was something a lot less lonesome in what I was doing than what it bothered to present itself as.

So when I make it to the intersection in the subway station, I decide to go with the line that will lead me to you, instead of the opposite one leading me back to my own place. Because I already feel well enough to start spending the day with you.

Fate might agree with me because as I jogged down the stairs to the waiting area, the train pulled into the station, and I managed to slip into the car facing the flight of stairs just as the automated doors slid back into place, and my pace did not fasten or slow down once.

I still felt as if I may not be quite connected enough to my body, but the odd day, by then, was starting to feel pretty good.

There was only one seat free too, despite the mostly vacant state of the public transport. Not a busy day of the week, and not a busy hour. By then, it had already felt as if this seat had been meant for me.

Well, it was mostly unoccupied. You’d propped up that stupid shopping bag on wheels of yours against the seat. Yours was deep purple. I remember growing up with my brother using a pink polka dot one for all of our grocery shopping. I had thought it to be ironic back in the day, but growing up, I considered that maybe it was just a convenient item that responsible adults, such as yourself and as my brother, found common use for.

Yeah, you’d been sitting in the very car of the train I’d caught. Purely on coincidence. But the recognition hadn’t come right away.

At first I’d only more or less glared at your purchases as I had traced my way towards the seat I’d already known was definitely mine. There were leeks peeking out of the top of the bag, and it had bothered me to no end. I’d imagined the contents filled with nutritious ingredients for healthy home cooking and it crushed me with guilt. I didn’t put that effort in for myself, and seeing others make that effort for themselves always settled that guilt back onto my shoulders.

But they had just been leeks and they weren’t really a definite indicator of what could be found in the contents of the shopping bag.

I hadn’t recognized you. I hadn’t even thought of it. Even though this was the direction back to your place, I hadn’t thought of the possibility of finding you here.

I should have known. You had one foot down on your seat, knee pulled in towards your chest, one hand shielding your face away, though you were already turned towards the car’s window. I should have known from the shape of your knee or of your elbow. I should have recognized you, but I hadn’t until the very last moment.

Standing over you, almost ready to ask for your adjacent seat, when, surely from the shadow I had cast over you, your hand had moved away and you’d snapped your gaze to mine.  
I knew my mistake then, as I watched your hand move. It couldn’t have been anyone else.

It wasn’t a happy reunion. There was no exchanged happiness from seeing one another in an unexpected setting. The recognition that pulled at your traits was akin to the realization of having set your palms face down onto a stove.

I understand that your reaction was for no other reason but that you had been, and still are crying. The noises of the subway had drowned out the proof, and your curled posture towards the window had hidden the rest. But the glance you sent upwards towards me simply could not and had no business conveying a false emotion. Watery, red-rimmed eyes, your chest heaving as it did not keep in the sob that my appearance had provoked in you.

I don’t think I was stunned, exactly. I was certainly not used to it. But I knew I could bring you some comfort. I knew that I too could be your rock from time to time. I hadn’t been stunned, and had been about to react, but you’d put up a different act immediately.

“What are you doing here?” You asked me.

Maybe in the hopes of swerving away from the evident topic I would broach. It didn’t really work because those sobs I hadn’t heard previously broke through your syllables cleanly. You ended up reverting to your earlier pose, only a bit more hunched over, and this time your hand covered your mouth instead of your face. I could see the quick intakes of breath in the way your chest moved regardless of your small tries at covering up your emotion.

You pulled the dumbly convenient shopping back towards you though. I didn’t sit down cautiously. And if sometimes you moved around me as if I was about to break when I cried, I could not go with that same sort of approach. I sat, intent on being someone stronger than I am, someone you could hold onto.

Your eyes narrowed when you looked my way. Through your palm it was distinctively hard to make out your word. “So?” You insisted, and I understood, even though I was more concentrated on the state of your eyes and of your face.

“I went shopping.”

Your free hand was wrapped around the handle of the wheeled grocery bag, and you extended your arm out at the response, thus pointing out my own lack of purchases.

“Window shopping,” I clarified quietly.

You could probably tell that I didn’t care to discuss this. It was clear what I wanted to discuss. You were choosing to ignore it for now. And I stayed put, ready with shortened answers and a meaningful stare.

My eyes darted away and slightly behind my shoulder as we pulled into a different station. You weren’t so aware right now, I could tell. But your hand finally moved away from your face and I suddenly had a lot more to analyse.

“Did you want something?”

I looked down at my lap, just a moment, before letting my eyes set back onto your obviously struggling expression. Struggling to make sure I had everything that I needed, not even, everything that I wanted, even if it meant ignoring your own deteriorating state. It wasn’t easy to think of.

“No.”

“Don’t lie.”

“No.”

You grunted, impatient, hurt, bordering on another escaped sob, and before long you were looking out at the indiscernible contours of the darkened tunnel again.

“I’m not lying.” I leaned closer into you and put my hand down on your lap. I didn’t move with the caution you did around me, but still expected you to give me another ‘hands on the stove’ expression. You didn’t. Even, it seemed as if your posture slumped more so, tension winding down progressively.

“I just needed to be away from home a little bit.”

Your eyes peeked at me again and the bitterness was made much more apparent by their swollen state. I hollowed out my cheeks, biting into them somewhat, the word ‘home’ was too much of a touchy subject between the two of us.

If I had kept my replies short and uninterested in the hopes that you would eventually bore yourself and come out with what was weighing on you, my plan fell through in just a moment. The accusing look you had given me had sent me tumbling into the need to speak pointlessly. I didn’t ignore it.

“You know, I read somewhere that they pumped more oxygen into casinos, to get people gambling more? That wasn’t true, I don’t think so. But it always feels like there’s something like that in the air of shopping centres.” Deep breath. My hand finally moved off of your lap and back onto mine where it found my right hand and began many unnecessary and nervous movements. “Like I can breathe more easily. Maybe it’s just because those places are built around the idea of consumerism though. It’s like one of those rare places where the world we’re living in shows its true colours and stuff makes more sense, or something?”

You’d leaned back onto the window by then. Kicking one foot up onto the seat again. But it was comforting to see you more openly angled towards me. I had your full attention. And if it was something I often yearned for, it did always come off as slightly intimidating.

“You’re troubled,” You announced to me.

The diagnosis did not hurt, and I was not being defensive, but I still told you; “So are you.”

“No shit, Dave, look at me.” I didn’t understand the hand gesture that you made to accompany the words, but maybe your hands had given up on trying to illustrate it, before even beginning. Your laugh was sullen with tears however and I did not ignore the way you rubbed at your eyes immediately after.

“What’s wrong?” And for the first time I recognized the carefulness that was so yours, in my own tone.

It did not dawn on me that there were strangers aboard who could watch this seemingly strange encounter. And I did not think about asking myself how many stations away we were from your place. I wanted to know, I needed to know the answer because this was important. And maybe, just maybe, you sometimes felt this way about me too.

“My life is a joke.”

Your voice was devoid of emotion, loud enough to not even preoccupy itself with the ruckus of the public transport. You’d stated an honest fact, was what your facial expression was telling of. Brave and defiant, ignoring the blotchy broken up surface it wore.

I said nothing. Eventually, the defiance fractured in half and your line of your sight slipped way down. Your foot too slipped down and you repositioned yourself, obviously shifting uncomfortably, and you rested the back of the bag over your knees as you stared straight on, so far away from me it seemed like. I had said nothing and the idea of your fact had withered quite quickly.

“You’re all I have, Dave.” No hesitation, and a perfect posture. But that too, after just a moment, faltered, and you hunched over, hands tight around the bag’s sides. “I know that I’m all that you have too, you don’t have to tell me. It’s just a little different.”

“Why does it have to be different?”

“It doesn’t have to be, but it is.”

Nothing more. I could see it now, you were slowly reconstructing yourself, locking the you I had walked in on just a while ago away.

“Tell me how.” So I insist, even though your breathing has calmed, and the redness over your cheeks is more in part of your eye rubbing rather than of legitimate crying.

You’d glanced my way, quickly, and this time as if you were the one back in control, and I could feel my composure starting to fail me. “I don’t want to.”

“Well, why not?” Slowly, as you gradually managed to hide away the person I had found, I felt smaller and smaller, and out of place. For the first time of this encounter, I thought of how much easier it would have been if I had headed back to my place first. Gone to yours only after.

“I don’t want you to become someone you’re not, mostly.”

“So, I’m the problem?”

“No, I didn’t—“

You stopped talking only once you’d turned back towards me, having found confidence in your returned emotional state. I felt your eyes transpiercing me as soon as you did however, and I almost got up. I didn’t know which station was next, but I would have ran out had the doors been open. Your eyes had found my discomfort as mine had yours earlier.

“It’s different…” I shook my head at your words. I knew you could see the millions of possible answers blossoming in my mind, all pinning myself down as the problem. I knew that one of them must have been the right one, and maybe that’s why you took pity on me and answered. “I might be the only person that you have, but you don’t always want to see me, you know?”

I didn’t know, and I did not answer. Your eyes didn’t move away from mine, not once, and you didn’t miss a beat in continuing your explanation.

“Which is fine. I want you to be comfortable and happy and to do what’s best for you. And sometimes you don’t want me around, and I want to encourage you to take those decisions…” You licked your lips and my eyes fell away from yours only for a second, and you must have taken that moment to let out the most difficult part. “It’s just that. I always want you around. You don’t always want me around. Can you imagine what it feels like to have the only person that you have not always want you around?”

Your voice only went slightly higher. The train had stopped, a lot of the passengers were getting off. By the time my eyes had returned on yours, the traces of the quiet boy alone on the subway were highlighted and present.

My throat felt tight and useless. Your eyes were downcast this time when you spoke.

“Some days you need me, and some days you don’t. And I’m happy that way. I’m happy to be needed at all. It just gets to me sometimes. I didn’t think you’d ever see me like that though…”

Your voice was quiet, it was the quiet kind, when you wanted to make that extra effort not to bring me harm or fright. It made me impossibly sad. How often did you cry? Away from me because you didn’t want to put pressure on me to live in any other way than I am currently. You sniffed only once, and you sat back into place. Your constant shifting gave me the feeling that I would soon be lightheaded.

I had never really seen myself as so badly needed by you. And that’s how I knew you were wrong. In the same way that I could not see that you felt a need for me, you could not see me feeling the same way for you. I did not feel any courage to tell you as much.

You weren’t surprised when I slid on the bench to be pressed against you, head resting on your shoulder. When you brought your arm around my waist, I brought my hand up to your opposite shoulder.

I shut my eyes and forced myself not to give in to tears. I wondered if crying in public made you feel less alone or more alone. Maybe the idea that so many people could walk past you without a helping hand made it lonesome. But maybe crying in a place that reminded you that you weren’t the only one out there was welcoming.

I cried in my apartment because it made me feel more alone. Maybe you cried on public transport because it made you feel more alone. I would understand that.

“We missed my stop forever ago,” you eventually tell me, still quiet, still cautious.

“That’s alright,” I whisper back.

I didn’t ask you about when you’d want to step out to take the opposite direction to go home. I didn’t want to move away from you. You didn’t tell me either. Maybe we’d wait until the very end of the line. It was still early. I was a little hungry.

“Can we prepare like a huge dinner together tonight?”

“We sure can,” You answer systematically.

I think about maybe spending the night. Maybe I’d fall asleep on your couch and claim it to be an accident.

“I saw you had leeks. They’re just the worst.”

You laugh loudly and honestly and don’t ask me to elaborate on that.

When we step out of the train, at the end of the line, as I had predicted, I loop my arm with yours and stay a bit too close to you. You smile at me, but it’s tainted with a million tears you’d never openly let me see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're enjoying it!! :)


	9. Running on Fumes

I could have stopped at any moment. I could have stopped at a night bus stop. I could have stopped at any pay phone and gotten in touch with a cab company. I could even have slowed down, turned back, and walked back to my bed instead.

Had I done so, it probably would have been to the armchair you keep in my living room instead, not to my bed. It had been no night for my bed. And though I had thought of stopping, of flagging down the next bus sign or phone, and had even thought of slowing down at every other moment; I still had made it to your block.

It had been unexplainable. The urge to go had been unexplainable as well, and the swap of clothes to the t-shirt, shorts, and running shoes had been languorous and goose bump induced. If I hadn’t felt well enough to sleep in bed, the iciness of my skin had still called for the bed covers as I had pocketed the keys. The urge to run had been there, but I had felt too cold, too sad to think of actually going any farther than the other side of the street.

I had thought of stopping practically the entire time. It was too cold and too late and I had had two servings food at your place just earlier, and the burn in my body had me believing I would eventually hurl it back out onto the sidewalk.

Eventually I forgot about the cold. I still had to swallow back the feelings in the bottom of my stomach, and still had to navigate my steps carefully amidst the combined darkness of the nighttime and of my eyewear, but I didn’t stop.

My thoughts were exclusively focused on the landing of my feet on the pavement and on the likeliness of my incapacity to move on further forward. Ironically, it was that continuity of the way the soles of my shoes pressed to the cement that barricaded away my failure to run all the way back to your place.

The staircase leading up to your apartment door was as much of a blink as my entire race to get to the bottom of it. Two, three steps and my feet had finally paused, upon the doormat that had originally belonged to your father’s home. My keys, thankfully, had not fallen from my pocket throughout the impromptu jogging. And the key you’d given me was still alongside my other, somewhat less important key.

My feet had paused, but my knees were bouncing as I unlocked your door. The crash only came once inside, door shut behind me.

The apartment is quiet and all the lights are off. My breathing, suddenly thunder in my ears. It only sinks in then that my flesh is as far as can be of icy, even as the goose bumps come back at full force. Everything registers at once. The discomfort is no longer limited to that belatedness but extends to the fire in my calves, shooting up my legs and my inner thighs. It had been a long way to run, it had taken a long time, and the soreness was hitting already. I leaned back against the door, breathing just as loud and as bothersome as before.

“Dave?”

Your voice feels far, and it might be. All the way from the comfort of your bed probably. The guilt is late to the party of submerging feelings. It’s too late into the night for me to be here. You have classes to attend and those are closer to now than your bedtime is.

“Yeah.” I have to answer though. The answer causes me to puff, causes my chest to heave, and attracts my attention to the true exhaustion I had brought upon myself when I had pushed past the possibilities of coming to a full stop.

You don’t speak again for a while, but I can hear your movements, even through my increasingly struggled breaths, probably putting your bed covers back into place, finding your slippers on your bedroom floor, those things and routines I shouldn’t and don’t actually really know.

The lights turn on, everywhere all at once it looks like, and it successfully puts an end to my heavy breathing.

You enter, looking around in a way that screams you’re on the lookout for fire, wire, gas, glass. The danger is me, I realize. I could easily enter the category of elements that keep someone from intervening. If it’s true though, you don’t show it. You approach me as if you’re on a mission to keep me from those things and not as if the thought that I may actually be part of those things had already crossed your mind.

You wear a bathrobe over your sleepwear. It’s dark blue, you’ve had it for years, I can recall. I shut my eyes for a moment, imagining the way your hands had moved as you had looped the belt around your waist before heading out of your bedroom.

When I open them again you’re right there. There is an emotion playing out on your face that has pinched your expression, but not enough for my eyes to linger there longer than on your hands, fingers spread and palms towards me, a small instinctive gesture of reassurance.

You’re not trapping me, it’s supposed to say. I came here on my own freewill, but my body can’t come up with any way to express that to you.

“You ran here?”

By the time my eyes have traced their way back up, your expression has devolved into something more closed up and more conflicted.

I try to convince myself that the giveaway is the outfit. I try not to think of my appearance or what it may be transpiring as.

“I know you have class soon… It’s just, a bit important.”

It’s not the best thing to open up with. You’ll be able to tell that I hadn’t really considered your studies and schedule until just about a moment ago, probably. It’s needlessly apologetic because I know you won’t be sending me back now. It’s something though, something for me to hold onto because you probably won’t even give two seconds’ worth of your time to that line.

“You could have called a cab, I would have helped to pay. Or waited for one of the buses. Or called.” I watch as you take an obvious breath, working through feelings and thoughts. I try to hold back on the laboured quality my lungs are burning for. “If you want to call, always call. I don’t care if I’m asleep.”

And that’s all it takes for you to take it a step further, to push away one more of the levels of distance between us. Your hands have moved to my shoulders. Your fingers are pressing down and I hadn’t thought of how suffocatingly warm a pair of shoulders could feel like before this moment, but now I am certainly aware.

“You don’t understand. I had to run. I mean, I needed to run before talking to you.”

If I’m sounding crazed, you probably won’t be hearing it. There’s something different in the way you’re handling this encounter, something that just won’t be able to line up with my objectives in coming over. But it’s your place, and your sleep interrupted, and so I let it be. I let you slip one arm around my shoulders and drag me further into your apartment, even as my legs slightly wobbled under my weight.

“I’ll fill the bathtub for you and you can borrow some of my clothes. Maybe you’d like a snack too?”

“No. I want to talk. I don’t want those things.”

The direction you’re taking is impossibly clear. So is the direction of your steps as your intents to bring me to the bathroom come to light. I dig my heels into the carpet, but my steps had already been heavy enough that it offers little to no contrast. My resistance going mostly unnoticed. As much as I’d always appreciate it, I really hadn’t come over in hopes of being babied.

“John, I need to talk, like right this instant. I didn’t run all the way here for you to say no, please, John.”

“I won’t go back to sleep. I’ll wait out here for you. You’re way wound up right now, you basically ran the distance of an entire city, let me take care of you.”

It’s only at your bathroom’s doorway that I finally give in and almost violently step away from you. I have to keep my legs bent while doing so, a strange sensation gripping my knees when I attempt to step onto straight legs.

“I don’t want to be taken care of. I’m fine.”

“Come on.” They’re the only two words supporting your claim, but as you gesture towards me and towards the global situation, I can’t help but to see how that would make strong enough a case all on itself.

“I’m feeling at my best, and that’s the whole point of it.”

You don’t have to express your confusion. You make a slight movement with your hands, eyebrows now lowered enough to promise your transition into genuine annoyance. I don’t take it too personally, I’m still feeling somewhat elated from the run, and I knew you’d been halfway through sleeping; no one would be in a good mood in that point of time, I got that. That said, I still didn’t let up, and launched into more babbling you probably wish you didn’t need to hear.

“That’s when I feel at my best. When I can get off my ass and actually move and not be a total waste to the vital organs inside of me.”

You make a small sound with your tongue against the roof of your mouth, a hand creeping up to rub at your right temple. Your change of heart is very noticeable, and I’m almost willing to take a step back, but not quite yet ready to invest in more spurts of body movement just yet.

“I’m not going to explain to you how you’re never a waste of body organs. But, tell me, why do you have to feel your best to talk to me? Is there something you’re scared of going into with me?”

All lingering illusion of sleepiness is gone by now. My halted breath, steadily coming back out in badly paced puffs. The distance between us has increased into something superior than when you’d been in your bed, and I, just outside your apartment door. But I’m not sure you’re able to pick up on that.

“More or less, I guess, not really.”

“But you had to build your confidence up by running a marathon?”

You had swerved away from annoyed so easily, calm comforting attitude back just as strongly as before. Your hands look as if they are twitching, and I can only imagine you are battling the temptation to corner me again, with your hands outstretched towards me in a motion of peace.

“I’m trying to make a decision. I wanted to see how I would feel about it at my best.”

“Why?” Your eyebrows are starting to sink again. You’re a step ahead of where you think you might be. I can tell.

“Because. I know I want to live with you when I feel my worst, but I figured, I wanted to know how I felt about it at my best.”

There’s a moment of something akin to silence. I decide to take in everything but your face in that time. The way your ankles are prone to rolling in, the shade of the wall when no sunlight is able to filter in, the torn skin on every single finger of my right hand. My lungs are aching less, but my heart still feels speedy from the exercise.

You lean back against the bathroom’s doorframe before speaking next, arms crossed behind you, looking a lot more vulnerable than you probably felt. “Alright. Well, now you know how you feel. So go get washed up, and then we can discuss it over a way past midnight snack.”

“Don’t you want to—”

“Nope, later.”

My look might be bordering pleading, but you don’t meet it. I imagine shoving my shoulder against yours rudely on my way into the room, but I don’t go through with it, instead pausing next to you.

“You’re making a mistake. We should talk right away.”

Your hand finds my shoulder again and it takes everything not to squirm at the warmth. It takes everything not to notice how much of a convenient fit your hand was to my shoulder. It takes everything for me not to breathe out the utter sentiments of rejection.

It happens too quickly, too fluidly. Your hand slips away from its perfect spot, over my collarbone and onto the expanse of thoracic space. You step into me, entire being just a breath away from mine.

“I can hear your heart galloping from across the room. Hell, I can almost see it. So I think you need to calm down before doing anything else.”

There’s no glee in your voice, and it takes me a moment longer to recognize it as something else than hostility. As a level of concern I absolutely always ignore.

I feel impossibly hotter. Hot with shame. It’s enough to make the security of the bathroom the best option. Maybe, that had been your plan; I thought to myself as I shut the door behind me. Maybe embarrass me in a way that I needed to lock the door and get cleaned up in any attempt to be alone again.

But I don’t lock the door. I don’t lock the door because this dizziness is only begging for me to do so and to trap me in here were I to pass out.

Once my shades are off and folded I rest them over the tank of the toilet. The lights feel oddly comforting for how bright they are now. It comes out before I think about it, just as I turn the tap for the shower’s water.

“John?”

You don’t answer right away, and I try not to imagine you on the other side. Maybe you’d stayed stunned, frozen, thinking of what I’d said? Thinking of the talk I had almost begged you to have. Maybe you were as unsure with your decisions and the things you pushed for as I was. Because when you do answer, it sounds as if you had not moved from the doorframe yet.

“I’ll bring you clothes before you wrap up your shower, don’t worry.” You still don’t sound as if you’re walking away, but you’d heard the sound of the shower, not the bath, in any case.

What really does it is catching my reflection. Not my favourite activity, really never has been. But from the corner of my eye, it has me stopping, turning, observing.

My fingers take to tracing the same path that you had, from my left shoulder, where the collar of my t-shirt somehow manages to slip off from, over the line of my collarbone, flushed red, red, red just as my face was, and dipping lower over the surprising protrusion of my costal cartilage.

My heart beats hard against the palm of my hand and I practically rip my top away from my body. The redness of my clavicles spread lower down, the entirety of my chest, to my arms as well.

“John?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” you call back.

I swallow down the thoughts of how unrecognizable I found myself to be within the frame of that mirror. I begin grasping how overworked I’d gotten myself to be, without so much as even realizing it. I manage to slip off my sneakers without the use of my hands, and with my shorts finally joined into the pile, I climb into your bathtub.

It’s effortless, stepping under the stream of cold water. But my entire body shivers at the relief of the temperature. My whole body aches for a single fraction of a moment, and then it’s gone.

I stay under the water, without thinking of turning the second knob, the one for warm water, not once. I think of the article I’d read, preaching about the way cold showers supposedly helped to burn off fat. It didn’t feel like any sort of victory this time.

At some point during the shower, you’d slipped into the bathroom and had folded the coziest pair of your pyjamas, the ones your father had given you on a Christmas morning, a while back, and had taken my running clothes away.

I don’t towel off the cold water before putting your pyjamas on.

I find you almost naturally and we sit on your couch, eating slices of watermelon you’d prepared, with the television on, but on mute, for the longest time before even trying to exchange words.

Only when you try to retire to your bedroom do I tell you.

“Let me move in with you.”

“I’m not going to take your word for it in the middle of the night,” you tell me back.

Maybe it was the sweetness in my mouth, or the cold of my skin under the warmth of your clothes, memory of overheated flesh so close to the surface, or maybe it was the familiarity of your living room, but I did work up the nerve to say it.

“I don’t need you to push me away. I can do that myself.”

You pick up the plate, the slices you’d eaten distinguishable from mine. I’d made sure to bite all the way to the end, no pink remaining on my slices. With your free hand, you cup the back of my neck, lean forward, and kiss my forehead. I frown, feeling a yearning for the shades I’d left in the bathroom.

“Don’t let me sleep alone on your couch.”

“I’ll switch with you, I don’t mind.”

“John. Don’t make me sleep alone.”

You never answer back. But I follow you to the kitchen as you empty and clean the plate, and follow you back all the way to your bedroom. And when you slip into the bed, you pull the covers down on the free side as well.

Once I’m settled in, you hop back out, go around the apartment, turning off the lights, and I almost fall asleep before your return. Just as we are about to fall asleep, you slip your hand over the back of my neck again, and, with a resting, comforting tone, you admit; “You really scared me.”

I can’t find it in me to answer, and you add, “Ask me to move in with me tomorrow morning.”

I try to tell you that I’ll try, but I’m not sure my words ever make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just no good at updating regularly, I'm really sorry. Please let me know what you think! Thank you for reading <3


	10. Loose Lips Sink Ships

“No wonder I never catch you wearing the same thing twice.”

I don’t dare letting you know it isn't all of it. The plan had been to make it progressive. Bring in my belongings by category day after day. The first day had been dishes and cutlery, I was able to tell it had rubbed you the wrong way, but when I never had returned to my place that night you had let it go. Maybe you had begun questioning yourself about my pushing back the clothes category. But now, with the stacks piled up high on your bed, you might have let that go as well.

I don’t dare telling you that as far as plans go, I had decided this was day one of three of the clothes category.

“That’s probably not true. My brother used to get pretty irritated whenever I’d come home with more shopping bags. His theory was that I wore about two percent of what was in my wardrobe. Or like, I’d open my drawers and only wear what was immediately on the top and overlook the depths of what it really was supposed to be.” I gesture vaguely with my hand, signalling how little of an impact the slight criticism had ever had on my habits. “I don’t really support that theory. I like to have a lot of choices so that I can match my outfits to how I’m feeling. I guess I just sort of always felt the same at that specific point in time.”

I was rearranging the towers of fabrics yet another time. Maybe you hadn’t noticed that I was just shifting things back and forth yet. The question as to where I was supposed to store my clothes hadn’t popped up yet. I sure as hell wasn’t going to find the audacity any time soon to just dump my clothes right next to yours. It’s not like we shared your bedroom or bed. Or, anyway, I wasn’t trying to make a habit out of that.

I chanced a glance towards you, hoping this was finally the moment you would pick to tell me in great detail and certainty where I was supposed to take storage space.

No luck. Sitting amidst all this mess still. The piles are nearly rivalling your seated height. Maybe my brother had been right. I can’t stand do look at you very long. Not with the way you were resting your chin on your hand, and not with that stupidly unaware smile accompanying the steady look you’ve been giving me.

“What?”

There’s nothing to get flustered about, I have to remind myself. I don’t think of how often I’ve been reminding myself of that just in the past days of trying to establish living with you.

“Nothing.” You shrug, and when I look at your face, you haven’t yet swapped expressions. Mine must have though because you put both hands up, palms towards me. I want to hold your hands. “What? Nothing! You’ve just been talking more again.”

“Great.” My teeth meet a couple of times before I find it in myself to say more. By then, my hands have slid into my jacket’s pockets. “This might be absurd. But that’s the sort of thing exactly that will encourage me to not talk so much.”

“Pretty sure you can’t help it.” What a shit eating grin. I kick the nearest post supporting your bed instead of focusing on that smile of yours. Your voice is gentler when you speak next though and I know without looking that your smile has become softer too. “Just like you can’t help it when you don’t feel like talking. I don’t mind. I like you regardless of your word count.”

“Sheesh, way to make me sound real annoying there. Either I babble too much or I’m quiet like the dead, yeah, I get it, thanks.” It’s instinct to talk over the puff of your chest and readiness to reply. I couldn’t tell what it would have been. Maybe outrage towards my twisting of your words, or unprompted reassurances. I didn’t want either one, so I simply put my hand out to motion the clothes. “How do you organize your clothes anyway? Colour, warmth, fabric? Which is it?”

“Er— I don’t know? My things kind of all look the same. Can’t really tell them apart. Though I can’t really tell your stuff apart either it’s all like… This gigantic mass spreading over my bed.”

“Then, just tell me where I’m supposed to put all this stuff.”

Great, alright, that had been smooth. I hadn’t made it sound as if I had been feeling anxious about it. Except for how choppily I had said it. Or maybe how high I had said it. Or something, because your smile is gone, replaced by that confused look.

“Ok. Well. I know you’ve got the habit of keeping your knives in your fridge. But in the world of normality, people just usually put their clothes in their wardrobe.” You spoke slowly, a slightly presumptuous grin tugging at your lips, but mostly still wide eyed.

“Yeah, thanks genius. The only wardrobe here is yours though. And you’ve just told me you can’t tell clothes apart to save your life. For a genius, it’s not as soundly brilliant of a plan as I was expecting.”

You perk up, your eyebrows raising just as your posture had. I recognize the reaction. It’s your ‘suddenly not feeling accommodating enough’ reaction. And to prove me right, you launch yourself into fast paced propositions. “Oh no… I mean, we could like divide the drawers. Left for you, ‘cause you’re left handed, and I’ll stick to the right. Or we could alternate drawers? Or I’ll just… I’ll buy you ten million hangers because obviously you need ten million, and I’ll hang up all your clothes. They look a bit too nice to be constantly crumpled and folded anyway.”

“Dude. Don’t bust a blood vessel. Besides, it’s your bedroom, I’m not going to contaminate it with all my junk.”

The high-strung appearance you’d presented just a moment ago collapsed so fluidly it was almost uncanny. Your posture slumped completely, your hands pushing your glasses atop your head before resting over your face. My fingers were itching to start reorganizing my belongings again. My gut burning with the need to either sit or to leave, anything but stand around awkwardly. I stayed put though, not able to find any creative way to encourage you when you start mumbling into your hands.

“I’m so stupid. I’ve been asking you forever. The least I could have done was gotten a room ready for you or something. Had like, the whole year to transform the piano room into a bedroom.”

The words are hard to catch, but their direction is predictable enough for me to catch them fully anyway.

“Hey no, c’mon.” It was hard to sound convincing whilst feeling like the very most awkward version of myself, but the words aren’t lies or off and that should be enough. “Kind of would have been a whole new world of pressure if you’d like made a Dave room here. That’s a little more than just forcing my hand.”

Your hands slide down to your cheeks, revealing your very forlorn look. I try smiling, and your returning one looked as much of an attempt as mine had.

“I make you sleep on my couch.”

It’s a whisper, and you make it sound as if it’s the confession to your greatest sin. It’s not appropriate, but I do start laughing. At least you eventually join in too with a few chuckles.

My standing is finally too much to bear and I sit down directly in front of you. Being on the floor, maybe you’re the one feeling awkward now and towering over me, but I tell myself that it’s the sort of thing only someone like myself would concern themselves with. You’re better.

“Well, I like your couch. And when I ask to sleep in your bed instead, you let me.”

“But maybe that’s just you wanting to sleep in a bed. Doesn’t mean you want to sleep in a bed with me. And I’m not offering you the bed minus me option. I’m not providing you with enough.”

You sound way too anguished for how unimportant this actually is. And I do in fact chuckle again when you go back to covering your face.

“Dude. I’ve got a bed. And I’m not done moving in. Maybe that bed’s going to end up here. If I need a bed minus you I’m able to provide for myself. Relax.”

I don’t say it. It’s hanging in the air regardless. If I needed anything minus you I wouldn’t have caved in and decided to change living arrangements. It’s unspoken, but it feels to me as if it’s embarrassingly obvious. That might just be in my head, but then again, when you free up your vision again, you’re back to seemingly confidently inquisitive in your features. And I taste your own unspoken words incredibly easily. ‘But you want to share my bed plus me, don’t you?’ I feel the accusation fully and almost head plunge to get my eyes locked onto the carpet.

“Hey…”

“No.”

No, I didn’t want a gentle conversation about fragile feelings right now. I want the floor to swallow me preferably. Or maybe I could slip under the bed and simply go unnoticed.

Your hands are moving over your lap and for a fleeting moment I allow myself to hope for your touch. Maybe you could reach towards me and put your hand over the back of my head. Or grab my hand. Or cup my cheek. Or I could avoid that sort of stuff entirely. There’s no way I was looking as the sanest person as I dug my heels into the floor and pushed myself further back and away from the bed, eventually drawing my knees back in and angling my body as away from the bed without looking too frantic.

It was the grand return of a feeling I did not want to name. It was much like the last time I had been in a doctor’s office and the doctor in question had pushed down on my abdomen to check my organs. A pressure that needed my entire attention and that had me feeling quite insignificant. The feeling that had always convinced me that I definitely did not want to live here and a feeling that hadn’t really appeared since I had asked for the opposite of that. But there it was again.

I looked like a lunatic. And all my clothes were on the bed. Most of all, I felt trapped.

I hadn’t really taken in my position until you had finally invented the contact I had so systematically set aside from my archive of hopes. Kneeling beside me and resting a hand over mine which had somehow wound up harshly tugging my hair. I hadn’t even been able to pick up on your movement until you were there, not with my eyes shut.

Once again I teetered on the edge of seeking more contact, entranced by the idea that it would be child’s play to fall into a hug with you just about now. To wrap my arms around you and to squeeze you tightly enough so that the pressure on my organs would have no choice but to pale in comparison.

I’m reminded that I’m always the one in need of hugs though and so I keep it to myself and keep the pressure of my nails on my scalp active enough that that might be the action to rival the unnamed feeling instead.

“Can’t you just tell me if we’re together or not?”

It’s not a conversation that I’ve ever truly wanted. But neither do I want your hand over mine right now. And I don’t want the mess over your bed. I want my clothes stored away. In groups of colour. And in those groups, classified by most comforting to least comforting. I think of the mossy green sweater I used to always wear, the one I’d been wearing when Bro had complained the loudest he had about my excessive spending on fashions I didn’t really care for; and I wanted that sweater as well.

I don’t want to ask what we are. I want to be at home, at my old home, with my old clothes, with all the old fights that never really mattered.

You simply ask, “What?” And I figure that you’re resisting the urge to instruct me with how I should breathe. That I should steady my breathing and not panic because I had been doing pretty decent up until now, more or less.

“Like, are we involved?”

“Involved?”

“Oh, come on!” I jerk the my elbow upwards and your hand drops, but mine doesn’t. “Don’t make me ask in twelve different ways, you already know what I’m asking.”

The answer you supply me with is frighteningly honest. It isn’t laced with the gentleness you often put up for me, neither is it infused with the aggression I’d put into my own words. Just, bare, unaccompanied words.

“I don’t know.”

The feelings are starting to recede and to lessen. My grip loosens.

“But do you want to be?”

I tried to match up your eased tone, but the tone slipped back too far into the grounds of too fragile and too soft. You didn’t seem to mind. If anything you mostly looked a bit surprised by the question.

“Well, yeah. Obviously.” You snort out a short bout of laughter.

My legs stretch out and I relax a bit. I didn’t need any contesting pressure now and my hands limply folded over my lap.

“It’s stupid really.” You go on once you’ve noticed my returned calm, and your unawarely big smile is back again too. “I mean, I guess I used to think I couldn’t keep myself from seeing people in hopes of ending up with you. Like, I’d grow bitter or resentful? But I never did. And I don’t think I will.” You take a deep breath and I try to keep myself from matching your breathing. “I realized I just wasn’t interested if it wasn’t you, like, forever ago. I don’t think it’s idealistic or anything, it’s just how it is.”

You don’t seem nervous, not at all as if it was something hard to share. I know it must be though. It must be because you’d never brought it up. Or maybe it was just hard for me and you were being accommodating by keeping it to yourself.

Albeit your stare switches to nervous when I move to grip my hair again and so I simply end up smoothing it out.

“So you’d date me and stuff?”

“Yes, and also stuff.”

We share a quick look. You burst out laughing, and I smile, still successfully maintaining the feelings in my stomach back down to nothing.

“Wow, stuff. That’s pretty damn romantic.”

“What can I say? You do things to my heart that require me to want to do stuff.”

“Like would you kiss me?”

Your laughter is cut cleanly. I don’t have time to regret my words, too interested in the way your expression can move from joking to flabbergasted in a matter of a sentence. When the idea of regret does catch up with me however I set my sights on the still disheartening view of my clothes in heaps and piles. Maybe your bedroom floor isn’t the ideal spot for this sort of heart to heart.

“Uh, duh? Dave, when you ask me stuff like this I get so concerned for you. Like in what reality do you live in where a different answer is expected?”

I do my best to laugh. This was, once again, not something to get flustered over. But, thinking you kind of liked me kind of a lot was getting easier by the second and maybe that at least somewhat deserved a healthy dose of embarrassment.

“Please. I’m so… Well maybe I’m not hideously repulsive. But I think I’m the least likely person to inspire in others the desire to touch me. Or, word that differently, I don’t care, but you get what I mean.”

“Basically, what you’re trying to tell me is that you think you aren’t sexy.”

“Yes, exactly!” I answer in such a rush that the embarrassment only settles afterwards. Wow, back to feeling awkward so quickly. I consider that I should probably stand up to try to ward off the unease, but I stay planted to the floor like some sort of idiot who definitely hadn’t sounded victorious at the idea that you were eloquent enough to get that I couldn’t be sexy in any world actually.

“You’re so stupid, Dave.” I turn towards you at that, but you’re no longer facing me. It’s hard to ignore the slight redness of your ears or your avoidance from looking my way now. “Like I wouldn’t want to kiss you. You have the most sinfully shaped lips. It’s a fucking crime that they belong to the most innocent person I know.”

“What?”

Too late though. You’d stolen my idea and had hopped up to your feet, approaching the piles again and putting on the best act of extreme interest in sorting everything. “So how did you say you liked to sort your clothes? Pretty sure I could fit all my stuff in one and a half drawer, we can make this work.”

“What do you mean most innocent. Am not.”

I get up at a much slower pace, observing the smile reappearing on your face.

“Colour sorting? You asked me about it earlier, is that something you do? If so, these piles are so not what we need.”

“Come on, would you actually kiss me?” I insist once I’ve approached the bed fully, already working on getting the piles to be by colour, as they had been at least an hour ago the first time I had decided to arrange my things.

“Yeah, kissing is one of the ideas I get when staring at your lips.”

You don’t say more, but your eyes do dart down and back up to mine. I throw an extremely shameful punch to your arm and you almost choke out your loud laughter.

It’s only much later, when you’ve finally quieted down, and my face has reached the last still acceptable shade of red that you say, quietly as if that’s the difference that’ll keep me from crossing over to unacceptable shades of red. “Not innocent, my ass.”

I try not to think of those things we’d shared on your bedroom floor again in the day. I fail spectacularly. When you finally point out my spaciness, I snap and tell you that that hadn’t nearly been all of my clothes we had maxed out your drawers with. You tried to shove me in response, but we somehow only ended up hugging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you are enjoying it :)


	11. Crux of the Matter

I guess it might have been commendable that we had never fought. Met at the tender age of ten, gone through years of teeth grinding distance, made it past our twenties without losing our cool; despite my problems and despite your expectations. It was pretty impressive, even, to have spent weeks in the same apartment now and to have slowly fond out that there was nothing to find out with new living arrangements, to have found out that we had already known everything that consisted one and the other.

It was a pretty damn great achievement. Fighting for the first time shouldn’t have been reproachable. Fights with my brother had been plenty. And growing up, you’d complained about your father more than once; even if you’d always seemed to back away from the aggressive attitude by the end of the conversation.

We weren’t saints. Even if you were pretty close. Fighting was not Earth shattering.

“What? I don’t give a fuck if the way I live my life isn’t good enough for you. Newsflash, it’s my life.”

Even so. The volume of my voice was frighteningly close to Earth shattering. I had put the emphasis on the swear word and the penultimate word and it was laughably dramatic. Thankfully, however, I wasn’t in the kitchen’s space, had I been that Earth shattering might just have transcended to dramatic plate shattering instead.

Instead I’m in the doorway, and I can tell that, despite your will to argue back, your eyes keep shifting towards the door. You can’t let me walk out. If you let me walk out no one wins the fight. This is stupid.

“That’s not what I said!”

Those were definitely familiar words. The words always thrown back at me. Bro used to tell me I would twist his words. Or I would twist his silences. I never honestly thought that that was a good reason to get so furious. So what if I twisted words? I twisted words into the truth. You didn’t want to say that you weren’t satisfied with the way I took things, so I was saying it for you. I was twisting your words into the truth.

“But you wanted to say it. So, you’re welcome.”

“Stop shouting.”

I could hear myself shouting. There was no use sending out another typical fighting retort and to tell you, ‘I’m not shouting!’ Things weren’t intense enough for me to lose hearing of that roaring volume.

A million details at once assault my mind as I think of how quiet you are around the apartment. How quiet all the other apartments are as well. The way you shut the cabinet doors as quietly as can be, the way you absolutely always use headphones for your laptop, the way you keep the volume of the television so soft you have to strain your neck towards it to catch every word, the way you avoid using the shower at certain hours of the day.

And a million other corresponding details drop as my brother mimicking perfectly those behaviours and constantly berating me on the times he caught me going against those things. It seemed as though I had never learned. It seemed as though I just wasn’t cut out to live alongside other people.

“Please, calm down.”

I could still hear you, I could still hear you over the loudness that occupied both my mind and my exterior composure, but it didn’t keep me from digging the heels of my hands into my face. What I honestly wanted to do was to turn around and to bang my forehead against the wall. But that was loud as well and would be a lot more worrisome than what I was going for now.

I could hear you so well in fact that I countered what was probably going to be your second request for calm and order before you even shaped the first syllable of your sentence.

“Just stop! Don’t tell me to live more immediately followed up by, just calm down.”

“I didn’t tell you you weren’t living enough, please, don’t panic.”

But you didn’t get it. You didn’t get my cue to stop giving me commands. Calm down. Don’t panic. I was being unfair, of course, because I was giving you just as many orders. And because, honestly, you hadn’t told me to live more. It was just a small comment completely unrelated which I had dragged out of context.

But I did it to twist it into the truth, I swear. Because I catch on to the way you look at me, and I catch on to the way you nudge me towards precise directions. And I know that you aren’t as happy with me as you may show.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Maybe if I did stop ordering you, you would return the favour. Because maybe if I didn’t put up the hostility, you would find no need to match it. There’s no maybes there. I knew that. So I pull my hands away from my face and I pace my breaths. There was no point in me walking out right now. I didn’t even have any socks on. I should stay inside, with you.

You make sure to be as welcoming as can be to keep nudging me into that direction.

You reassure me, “I’m not lying to you,” and you take a step forward even if it’s still easily another half a dozen steps in between us, and you keep going, telling me, “You can lay down and relax, and I’ll get started on diner.”

And it’s just too much.

“I don’t want diner, Egbert.”

You don’t flinch at the last name, you don’t flinch at the still booming volume, you don’t even look as if you’d considered taking your step forward back.

Instead. You throw your hands up, and it’s the most frustrated I’ve seen you be with me, and it’s more stinging than it is anything else, really.

“Yeah. I know. You never want diner. But I’m going to make diner, and you’re going to eat it, got it?”

There’s not even room for a stunned silence.

“I told you. Stop telling me what to do!”

“Then maybe take that advice you made up and let yourself live a little.”

I thought it might have been almost funny how I turned my head away, a bit as if you’d slapped me across the face. Which, to be perfectly honest, it really felt like.

Maybe I twisted people’s words so that I didn’t have to get to the point where I actually got to hear those words coming from them directly. It was hard not to think of the millions of unsaid things I had claimed my Bro was guilty of thinking. Were those true too?

“I’ll make anything you want,” you tell me. It’s much too weak to be of any consolation.

“Why bother feeding a corpse, Egbert?”

I taste it on my lips, the pending ‘I didn’t say that!’ The accusations that I had jumped bridges and conclusions too hastily. You hadn’t insulted me, you’d just thrown the words I had made up for you right back at me.

You don’t say anything like that. Instead you say:

“I’m not going to take it back, I’m sorry. You eat as little as you can. You sleep as little as you can. You are so obsessed with the idea of taking as little space as possible, so no, I don’t think you’re living your life, you’re right. You’re just getting by.”

They dropped like well rehearsed words. Words you’d gathered living with me these past few weeks. Maybe, where I had not felt as if there was anything new to learn about you by coming here, you’d found things about me that you didn’t like. Maybe the experience had been different for you, and just maybe those words had been waiting right behind your lips.

No socks be damned. There wasn’t any escape. I had found someone new to take my old lease just a few days ago, I had left behind a lot of my things there, offering them up with the lease. You’d been there to transport your armchair back here though. I probably should not have waited for things to be official to bring up confrontational tendencies with you.

I’m turning in towards the staircase by the time you’ve opened the door. And, even though you’d been quiet every single second spent in the building, you yell out to me, out in the hallway.

“Dave, come back!”

My knuckles go white gripping the railing of the staircase. But my sight neither goes white nor red. Not even black. Dull coloured. Dull just like I was, and just like you perceived my ways to be. It’s much more than enough hesitation for you to catch up to me. But you probably already knew I couldn’t walk away from you were you to call out for me to come back, in the middle of a hallway in which you usually always insist to remain quiet.

I think back to the first time I’d heard the saying, some rules are made to be broken. I’d downright refused it, and I might still do. I set rules up for myself and went crazy with frustration if I failed to live up to them. You broke your rules for me, I realized. You were willing to throw away a lot for me, I also knew that.

Your hand moves to rest on the railing, just beside mine. It was such a great hand. It was so much better than mine. Just seeing it next to mine broke my heart. My heart though, I had broken over and over again weighing the chances of misery away or with you. I didn’t have to face how I failed to live up to you too if I wasn’t near you. But then I wasn’t near you. It was as simple as that.

“I think…” I start off shakily, and I bring it all down to something that isn’t even enough to shatter silence instead. “I spend a lot of my time being creative. I think, that has a lot to do with life.”

You whisper a ‘sorry’ but it isn’t yet fully formed and I’m not sure I’m ready for you to be sorry. I would much prefer to show you something different and then you could apologize with a new perspective instead of regret.

“Maybe it doesn’t seem like I take up space. But when I write, or draw, or make music, or collect, or take pictures, those things are taking up space for me, right?”

Your answer surprises me, seeming out of the blue.

“You’re worth it, Dave. You don’t have to shrink yourself, you could occupy all of the space my life has to offer. In fact, I think you might already.”

Everything was back to quietness for now and I wasn’t so sure if this really counted as a fight after all. Not even making it to a different level of the building was a bit of an embarrassing loss for me. It wasn’t really so bad though…

“I’m not hungry,” I say, glancing back to our front door. That’s right, our front door. It was our home, and I had no business walking away from it. I just needed to keep reminding myself. Keep reminding myself that I was worthy enough to exist in that space. I took a deep breath. We were going to go back inside and you were going to make diner and I just might be sick.

“I’ll think of something fun to do, and you’ll tell me when you’re hungry again, yeah?”

Yeah, I wanted to supply an answer to that hypothesis already, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because we’d narrowly fought and my stomach was twisted up enough with simply that knowledge that I didn’t want to drag on any conversation pertaining to stuffing said stomach.

I nod, and I slide my hand onto yours. I wonder if you understand how much of a brave move that is for me still. You look at me as if I’m just the most wonderful person you’ve met, and it occurs to me that you just might understand that as well. It occurs to me that those things you had said must have been things you’d always known as well. You’d invited me to stay with you, knowing those things. There was no use in me panicking.

Even so, I did not feel in my place once inside. The bottoms of my feet felt dirty now, and my hand shaky, even though you’d held it as we had walked back. You’d lead me to the couch and I had stayed there as you’d walked away, thoughtlessly and wordlessly. I felt as if both of those, thoughts and words, had checked out from my being for the night. I’d lost it like that, with my brother, many times; with strangers, occasionally; with you? Never. Preferably never again.

The space in between the moment you left and the moment you returned was unknown to me. You sat on the floor though, facing the television and away from me, and had dumped the contents of the puzzle box onto the floor before I had taken the interest of catching sight of the picture on the box.

“What?”

“I don’t know.” You laugh just shakily enough for me to believe your loss and to let myself slip onto the floor next to you.

“You don’t know?”

You shrug. “I kept telling you to calm down instead of actually helping. This is how I usually calm down.”

“Puzzles? Like an old grandma?”

You punch my shoulder, and immediately start placing the pieces into piles.

It’s one of those billion piece puzzles, I’m sure. You seemed as if you knew what you were doing though. I only knew about gathering the edge pieces so that’s what I did.

After some time, you answer, distracted.

“Actually, yeah. When I was tiny my Nanna would always complete puzzles with me. Those were good times… So, yeah.”

I glance over, but I don’t say anything. I keep sorting.

You eventually start assembling, and I copy you with my outside pieces. We don’t communicate about strategies or methods even once. It’s calming enough that I find myself breathing fully again. But it’s quiet enough that on every inhale I breathe in the guilt of our confrontation.

It’s Friday night. It turns out that, living together, I still don’t see as much of you as I’d like to see. It turns out that our schedules are busy and we often miss each other. It turns out that every week I look forward to the weekend to be with you, and that I had already kickstarted it with brattiness and the likes.

We had so little time together I hadn’t slept anywhere else but in your bed this last week, wanting to find just that much more time.

I don’t realize the water in my eyes until it gets extremely unlikely for me to distinguish pieces. I don’t pull back from the puzzle until the tears are slipping down my nose and threatening to land on your masterpiece and to give me away.

So I draw back and I breathe in the last bit of guilt I hadn’t taken in, and do it with enough of a sobbed shake that you know perfectly well what is going on.

We hadn’t spoken so far during the activity. And it had been calming, yes. But it had also confronted me with my lack of… Well, there were too many words that could fit in there.

“Look, we’re almost through it! We did this whole thing.”

It was mostly you though, and it looked as if, if my counting was still right, that there could be another two hours of work to put in.

“Do you think you could kiss me?"

I ask, but what I mean to ask is; do you think I could sell my first kiss as compensation for my inability to make our weekends worthwhile?

You stay quiet for a long time and manage to connect four more pieces before speaking up.

“You’re sad right now, I don’t know if that would be best.”

“Do I have to wait until I’m happy?”

You sigh, not impatient, not frustrated as you had been earlier. You must be hungry by now, it’s a wonder you aren’t grumpier.

“That’s not it, Dave. I want to kiss you, but, you know…”

You don’t want to be an emotional crutch. You’re more than a crutch though. More than a wheelchair. A whole damn house. My stupid home. That’s you. But it goes without saying and I end up saying nothing at all.

You’ve stopped connecting pieces. You’re staring at them still, but you aren't thinking about them, I can tell.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I’m nervous too.” You smirk. “It’s my first time too, you know? Even if I probably think of kissing you more often than you do me.”

Debatable. But I’m not looking for opportunities to argue with you.

You wanted things to be special.

It was special though. The half finished puzzle, the quiet apartment and the empty stomachs. The bottoms of my feet still felt dirty, but my breathing felt clean and pure again.

“What if we made like… A romantic diner? Late romantic diner, but… The apartment could be candlelit, and then it would all make sense.”

It’s only once you look at me, eyes wide and confused, that I even consider that the nerves were related to something else than just ‘setting’. The confusion shifts to fondness at a dizzying speed however, and my right hand slips into your left one as if you’d asked for me to do it out loud, and not as if your fingers had only slightly parted in preparation.

It was quiet communication, just as the puzzle building had been.

The bottoms of my feet were dirty were dirty from running down the hallway, and my face was dirty from crying. And, you didn’t say so, but your heart was heavy with sadness from our previous argument. I wasn’t sure just why, but I could feel it in your every breath. But you leaned towards me and your breath was against my lips instead and it felt different from sadness now. Your eyes met mine and it felt as if it was their closest meeting yet. My heartbeat was hard against my thoracic cage. What if our glasses clanked together? What if I missed your lips? What if it didn’t even feel right?

Being nervous was understandable suddenly. And suddenly it wasn’t at all.

My left hand moved to lay flat atop an empty spot of the puzzle to support my weight as I leaned closer into you. There was really no other way to describe kissing you other than a sudden comprehension of how much closer we could be.

It was hard to pull away from that sort of thing or to remember doubts.

So, of course, it’s much later that we are even able to stand up again. We end up making honey and jam sandwiches instead of a romantic diner, and eating them on your bed. Your eyes are shy then and your face pinker than usual. Your lips too seem pinker and curved upwards permanently. It’s strange to think about what it has to do with me.

We kiss again before brushing our teeth and when I breathe in afterwards, I inhale something very different to guilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah major props to everyone who is still reading this! Thank you so much <3!


	12. Broken Record

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the wait! I really hope you enjoy this chapter! :)

It wasn’t our first date. It wasn’t nearly our first time going out to grab dinner together either. Actually, we might have gotten to a point above what I would care for. At least once every weekend, and sometimes, at random intervals, on weeknights as well. But it made you happy, and it mostly made me happy too.

You’d received a stellar grade on a report you hadn’t been so sure of earlier this week, and you’d made me promise to go out and celebrate with you come Friday night. Friday night had come just a few hours ago and you had, of course, chosen one of your upscale restaurants. My own culinary picks seemed to be limited to the places that weren’t too classy to forgo the bold printing of the kilojoule intake directly next to the items on the menu.

It was your first time ordering drinks though. Maybe that was the celebration portion of things. At best, on our usual dates, you would order a glass of the recommended wine, and reminisce lengthily about your father’s connoisseur status of wineries and the art of wine. I’d crack a joke about him having the perfect nose for wine sniffing, lovingly of course, and you’d laugh loud enough to actually forget about the glass next to your plate. Just as well because you, unlike your father, do not like wine and know just about as much as I do about it.

But you’d picked up the cocktail menu tonight and had decided we needed fancy drinks. You’d gotten a Bloody Mary, but I suspected you liked the name more than you did the flavours. That said, it had been gone and emptied by the time you’d ordered your meal. And then, my Appletini, which you’d appropriately picked for me, had wound up on your side of the table, also drained, by the time the plates were put down.

It was better that way. I wouldn’t have ordered it for myself, despite the temptation of the apple component. The biggest problem wasn’t even the alcohol. It was still that girl at a sixth grade birthday party which I had attended, who had turned down a juice container with the phrase; ‘I’d rather use up my calories on food, not liquids.’

It hadn’t made sense back then, and it hadn’t for a while, but I had been a lot less excited about my own serving of juice at that party. And as a non experienced drinker, the mystery of the cocktail glass was just as bad as the absence of numeral intake in the menu.

So I’d tried to turn it down when you’d ordered me a second drink in apology of stealing mine.

It proved to be in vain because as it was now, you were finishing that very same newly ordered Appletini, instead of concentrating on your plate. The question as to why we hadn’t gone for a bar or something of the sort passed through my mind more than once. But the answer never changed. Because a restaurant was already a setting I did not like as much as our home, and a bar was a step even farther away from that.

Still, I had been thinking you were holding your liquor exceptionally well. Not that I was particularly familiar with the subject, but I still found myself wondering and worrying about just who you usually drank with, or if you did alone, and of just how much it had taken to build up that resistance. Probably pointless speculation.

And as you set the glass down onto the table, and resolutely keep ignoring your food in favour of staring me down, I have to slowly come to terms with the idea that you might just be a little more affected than I was giving you credit for.

“You’re not a bad person.”

Your voice was just loud enough to let me know you’d had too much already. Your words were just enough for me to know you weren’t the sort of drunk who would avoid meaningful discussions.

“Thanks.”

My words, in contrast, were supposed to come off with the appropriate tone to let you know just how inappropriate you were being. The translation was never made.

“But we’re in disagreement.” Not a question. And I wasn’t so sure your current mood was one that left place for questions.

It wasn’t exactly easy to be the only one eating, so I’d been busying myself with pushing my food around my plate. I tried to focus on that, until I peeked at you and found your stare unwavering. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for an answer to your non-question.

“Sure, yeah. Sort of.”

That’s all there was to say on the matter, but here too we were at a disagreement.

“But you’re such a good person, Dave.” A long sigh. “A really, really, really good person.”

Maybe I shouldn’t be taking to heart words spoken after a Bloody Mary and two Appletinis. Words spoken loud enough still that looks of concern were being thrown towards our table. It must have been the broken hearted quality to your voice and my refusal in participating more than necessary. An air of gravity had befallen our table.

Just the same. Your choice of words, so simple and easy, had a way of overwhelming me.

“I think. I think you’re the least hurtful person I’ve met.”

And I wish your words could have been a little more slurred. I wish you could have been a person who would down alcohol and then grumble out completely irrelevant things, just like in the movies. The only difference was the look in your eyes, the slight colour in your face, and your increasing loudness.

“Trust me, I’m not.”

Not a beat of silence for you to answer back, as if simply overstepping my own claim.

“The only person you ever hurt is yourself.”

“Look, please eat. You’ll feel better.”

At least you seemed to accept as much, as if your hunger was a satisfactory answer to what was written all over your face as unease and as troubled thoughts. Your motor skills had suffered more than I had realized though and you struggled to cut up pieces of your duck.

The silence was welcomed though. And I matched every bite of yours to one of mine. Obviously, it wasn’t all that easy to ignore the words you’d used. Especially seeing how conscious I was of your eyes on me, always returning, and with a distress I could feel you would speak of.

You didn’t get through much of your plate before starting again and I had to slouch my shoulders somewhat, also conscious of other eyes on me.

“You know, I’m not angry that you’re sad.”

“I know that.” And I did. You didn’t see me as weak for it, and you were not appalled by it. That was what I wanted. That was already quite enough.

“I just want you to know you don’t have to punish yourself. ‘Cause you’re a good person. Really good.”

It was a nice restaurant. And you’d had a nice week. And all of this was totally ok. But this conversation wasn’t mandatory. This conversation was not for me. But no amounts of digging my nails into my knees or sinking my teeth into the insides of my cheeks were giving you the clear signal.

“Can we talk about this later tonight?”

And hopefully later tonight could equate to you passed out early from the drinking. That was something normal, right? To be expected? I just needed to hold on to that hope.

“I don’t know what went wrong.” Your voice was slowly descending into broken and hopeless and I absolutely felt as if I was dodging hateful glances now, as if everyone would automatically assume I was telling you off or breaking up with you, or anything else that could have destroyed your tone so utterly.

“Nothing went wrong.” I hurried to tack on an invitation to quickly get out of here. “If you aren’t hungry, we’ll go back home. I’ll just go pay at the counter and you can wait for me outside, ok?”

“You weren’t this sad before.”

There was a slight shake in your hand, the one resting over the table, and I tried to cover it with mine, squeezing with the sort of force I was hoping was just apt enough to get you to reel it back in a bit.

“John, it’s fine.”

Even your name didn’t seem to be an anchor to your straying thoughts. Your eyes weren’t leaving me, but you could not have felt farther away.

“When you’d come visit in Washington, you were always happy. Well, maybe not happy… But we could stay up all night and eat everything in the house. Now you only ever order the cheapest thing on the menu. Sometimes it’s not even a main, it’s a dumb entree.”

“Restaurant portions are big…”

“And when you’d come visit, you were always there. It never felt like you went away.”

You didn’t mean away at work either. I knew what you meant. It was the impossibility of anything over a two day streak. A two day streak of normal, positive feelings, always followed up by a wave of nauseating sensations and thoughts. I didn’t really go away. But I knew I wasn’t easy to talk to, and looked for isolated places, even if it meant holding up the bathroom for an entire hour.

It was hard to accept the idea that you still thought of me as someone good when your apparent misery only multiplied my guilt.

“But, it’s fine.”

“I don’t know. You were sad a lot in grade twelve. But you always said it was just because you missed me. It was great because I just needed to be with you after high school and you wouldn’t be sad. But it didn’t work. You get sad more now, even though we’ve been close for all these years.”

Your eyes finally left me. Your hand left mine as well and it was a small relief that I didn’t have to be comparing hands with you while my confidence was being beaten to the floor. Your hands were covering your face now. You were upset. Despite your words, pointing me out as the one dragging his sadness around, you were the one overcome with it now.

“Right, ok, I’m taking you home.” I tried to be as gentle as can be. No response came from you.

By the time I’d flagged the waiter down, you’d emerged from your hiding, eyes red from the pressure, and somewhat dazed looking. You tried to order another Bloody Mary, insisting that I’d had two drinks, and it was only fair for you to have equal treatment, but the waiter seemed more than willing to side with me and to get me the bill instead.

I’d asked to pack your plate in a doggy bag, but not mine. My meal hadn’t been all too exciting anyway. It was the sort of meal that fit well into that category you’d pinpointed earlier; cheapest item of the menu. I didn’t really like ordering salads in restaurants though, deadly aware of the judgements the waiter might pass. As if everyone would take a look at me, and then my plate, and decide that I was eating as if I were someone else, and not myself.

For how dextrously you’d swerved the conversation away from my nudges to wrap up whatever was on your mind and head out the door, you’d been surprisingly easy to drag out of the place, arms wrapped around the styrofoam container of food as if it were a pillow or a pet, and eyes almost vacant. The walk home was long, but also surprisingly easy for you. I’d assumed you might have staggered or walked in odd paces that would signal your lack of sobriety, but you seemed unaffected.

The bus home would have been a much shorter route, but I didn’t want to step into the bus with you in tow. It’s not that you did smell like alcohol, but I was afraid someone else might think differently. Think that, maybe it was I who had too much to drink instead of you. Senseless fears that honestly did not have enough to do with your wellbeing. But you didn’t complain on our way back, or even peep a word for that matter. You’d opened up the container and picked at the duck and coordinated eating and walking in a fashion that had me asking myself if all that alcohol was only a smidgen of courage to put me back into my place with the help of your words.

Honestly, you were the only person whose eating habits didn’t annoy or gross me out. The sounds of mastication, of cutlery against plates, the likes, always demotivated me from doing the same. But I didn’t mind the sounds you made. They were almost nice, really. I knew that I knew of people who had better table skills than you did, whole pushing their quinoa salad onto the back of their fork and the rest of that pretentious ordeal, but I didn’t care to sit at a table with them either. Only you.

I’d never told you that. Just as I couldn’t bring myself to comment on how much I liked the colour of your eyelids, or the veins I could trace on the back of your hands, or the way you tied the laces of your shoes. They were odd compliments, and even though you were probably the only person in my life who would receive them lovingly, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

The silence and your quickly vanishing meal of duck had me reconsidering my hunger, thinking of different treats I could sneak out of the pantry and stuff into my mouth before I had time to reconsider again. But of course, I only allowed these scenarios to play out in my head because I did know the walk held the time to allow my second reconsideration.

When we entered our apartment; I had to sling your arm over my shoulders on our way up the flight of stairs, and had pried the keys away from you when your motor skills proved to be on par with your lack of vocal control, you made a beeline for the couch, as if forgetting your environment, the time of the day, our exchange, everything. You’d picked up the remote control, on the armrest where I constantly insisted we needed to keep it, and turned on the television almost mechanically.

Infomercials, I realized hastily. You blinked at the image so absently, I doubted you’d realized as much. Your jacket was still zipped all the way up, your sneakers still on, the bows of the laces with those hoops goofily overlarge which I adored somehow. So I took care of the styrofoam container, washing it and leaving it on the counter when I remembered that I actually couldn’t remember what was and wasn’t recyclable. I’d ask you come tomorrow. And brought out the jug of water and a tall glass to the living room.

I was under the impression that water drinking was supposed to help with the alcohol, but here again my recollection was not so strong. I still poured you a glass of water, and then a second when you finished the first one with an empty gaze and empty movements.

I would have left you alone because it felt like the right thing to do. But you encircled me with your arms and pulled me down over you. It was odd because I’d never sat on anyone’s lap, I supposed. Not even as a grade schooler at the mall with my brother, passing by the lineup for Santa Claus. My brother had never wanted me to grow up delusional. That all felt so faraway now though.

It didn’t stay odd for long because it absolutely felt as if you wanted to smother yourself with me, tugging me closer to keep your arms around me and pushing your face down against my shoulder.

It probably wasn’t the right thing to ask, but I did; “D’you want me to move out?”

Somewhere in my brain, it was a reasonable idea. It was desolating for you to find time after time that your presence, which my entire being felt as if was wholly enough, just wasn’t enough to keep whatever was plaguing me at bay. I needed to stay away from you. Sort myself out. But experience foretold that it wasn’t quite so easily achievable.

“You know, I love you?”

“I do.”

There was a ‘but’ of course, but it didn’t come. Your voice was just as loud as it had been before, but here it felt safe, especially spoken against my being.

“I love you. Crying, yelling, smiling, love you always. And you know that.” I nodded hurriedly. “You know that. I know that. But you’re a part of me, you know?” I also knew. Your hand fumbled a bit, and I was sure you were trying to rest it over my heart, but it ended up simply covering most of the part of my chest directly under my collarbones, heart probably included. “You’re part of me. That’s why, when you’re hurt, I’m hurt.”

I rushed in then because still something inside of me claimed it to be reasonable. “And that’s why I’m offering to go. You said I wasn’t hurtful earlier, but you’re saying different now.”

You shook your head, nose brushing against my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what the movement meant, and for a second I listened to the voices coming from the television.

“A part of me, dumbhead. Listen. If my hand’s hurt. Well, it hurts. I don’t know, I mean, hand’s hurting more than I am, I’m sure.” You laughed, trying to be considerate, and I brought a hand up to pet your hair down. “But basically. I am not going to cut myself open and chop the hand off. That’s going to be a lot worse than the hurt hand.”

I sighed, readily playing along. “Look. You can go to physiotherapy, for the hand, I mean. If it’s broken beyond repair though… Like, doesn’t respond or whatever. You get it amputated, you replace it with a prosthetic.”

I licked my lips. That metaphor had gotten away from me pretty quickly. I didn’t actually like the sound of being replaced all that much.

“I don’t think you’re broken.”

The tone of your voice had changed immensely. There was no tacked on ‘you know’. You didn’t think that I knew that. But you had wanted to state it as if it were the outmost truth.

You spoke it as if, with that observation alone, all of my comparisons had been thwarted and cancelled.

“My hand isn’t broken. It just doesn’t really know that… I’m just. Waiting for it to remember that it isn’t.”

You emerged from the spot of my shoulder you’d occupied to tell me as much. And then, that was all for the night. You kissed me longly, longingly, lovingly, and all else that could fit into the alliteration. Your mouth tasted differently than it usually did, and your hands gripped the back of my neck firmer than it would usually. And I kissed you back, for hours it felt like, as if I accepted everything you had said.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! I'm unsure of the exact number of chapters yet, but it will definitely be over eight!  
> Thank you very much for reading <3


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